Thread: RETURN OF THE BOY SCOUTS -- to the U.S. Supreme Court

RETURN OF THE BOY SCOUTS
[to the U.S. Supreme Court]
uexpress.com ^ | August 9, 2006 | James J. Kilpatrick
Posted on 08/09/2006 5:39:13 PM PDT by freedomdefender

After a six-year absence, the Boy Scouts of America are back in the high court again. This time it is their brother Sea Scouts who are asking the Supreme Court for a lifeline. The case of Evans v. City of Berkeley is a close one. These are the facts. Eugene Evans joined the Sea Scouts in Berkeley, Calif., in 1957. He was then 13 years old. It is not especially relevant, but he has served as skipper (the equivalent of a scoutmaster) of the Sea Scout ship Farallon for the past 35 years. The vessel serves as the equivalent of a BSA troop. Over the years, hundreds of teenagers have benefited from training in sailing, seamanship, engine repair and other maritime skills. The value of the Sea Scout experience is not questioned.

Seventy years ago the city began giving the Sea Scouts a free berth at its marina in exchange for rip-rap from a Scout-owned quarry. Everything went along without incident until 1997, when the Berkeley City Council amended its policy: Since then, as a condition for free occupancy, the city has required tax-exempt users of the marina to enter into a formal written pledge: Access to the facility cannot be predicated on a person's "race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, political affiliation, disability or medical condition."

The Sea Scouts were prepared to go along with everything except "sexual orientation" and "religion." Like land-based Boy Scouts, the Sea Scouts exclude avowed homosexuals and atheists. In an effort to preserve their berthing privilege, they filed a formal statement expressing their view: "Sexual orientation is a private matter, and we do not ask either adults or youths to divulge this information at any time."

This was not good enough for the Berkeley City Council. In May 1998, the council formally cut off the Scouts from their free berthing privileges. The Scouts and the city have been in and out of court ever since. Last year the California Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in the city's favor. Now the Scouts' appeal is pending in the high court here in Washington. The Scouts argued unsuccessfully in California that the city had denied them their constitutional right to freedom of association. Their controversial positions on religion and homosexuality may be unpopular in certain quarters, they concede, but the positions are not unlawful. More to the point, the Scouts' right to advocate at least their opinion as to homosexual membership has been constitutionally protected since the Dale case of 2000.

That was the case that involved Eagle Scout James Dale, an avowed homosexual and public advocate of gay rights. After the Scouts expelled him for his public apostasy, he sued for damages. The Supreme Court, speaking through Chief Justice Rehnquist, rejected his position 5-4. The effect of that opinion may be that Berkeley cannot withhold from the Scouts certain benefits to other nonprofit organizations. Then, again, it may be that the facts are sufficiently different in the case of the Sea Scouts.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, the Scouts allege that in April 1998 the city's Waterfront Commission attempted to impose particularly onerous conditions: In order to receive free berthing, the Scouts would have to "disseminate, advocate and proselytize Berkeley's viewpoint on sexual orientation in an effort to change the BSA's national policies regarding gays and atheists." The council refused to impose this requirement, but it lingers as a reflection of the municipal attitude.

The California Supreme Court rejected the Scouts' position across the board. In its view, the city had not penalized the Scouts for exercising a right of free speech or association; the city had not prohibited the Scouts from doing anything; it had not demanded "adherence to or renunciation of any idea or viewpoint." The city had merely refused to accommodate the activities of an organization engaged in invidious discrimination.

We heard essentially this same argument advanced from another quarter two years ago. Then the Department of Defense was engaged in a running battle with some of the nation's most prestigious law schools. The issue was whether the armed services, which banned homosexuals, would be able to recruit graduates on the same basis with other potential employers. The universities, hoity-toity, at first refused to extend more than the most minimal courtesies to Army recruiters. After they were threatened with loss of federal aid, they came around.

My guess is that the City of Berkeley has much greater leverage on the Scouts than Yale and Harvard had on the U.S. Army. Pipers still call tunes, and Berkeley is calling this one.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1680827/posts

Boy Scouts' banishment threatens Catholic Church
Philly precedent could be used against museums, radio station
December 14, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Bob Unruh - © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Pro-homosexual Philadelphia officials' campaign to evict the Boy Scouts of America from their long-held regional headquarters on city-owned ground will create a precedent that could endanger dozens of other groups in the city, including the Catholic Church, as well as museums and a public radio station.

The issue: The City Council has decided the Boy Scouts, because they prohibit participation by open homosexuals, do not comply with the city's anti-discrimination policies and can no longer rent their headquarters for $1 a year, as they have since the city approved its original resolution on the plan 80 years ago.

The city had set a Dec. 3 deadline for the Scouts' Cradle of Liberty Council to agree to pay $200,000 a year, instead of $1, but the Scouts simply ignored that deadline, and negotiations apparently have broken off.

Assuming there are no changes in circumstances, that would mean the Scouts would have to be out of the building, which they built and paid for with their own funds decades ago, on June 1.

That left many, including a black leadership organization called Project 21, headed by WND columnist Mychal Massie, enraged. "I live close to Philadelphia and am aware of the problems plaguing the city," said Project 21 member Jimmie Hollis. "The fact that the City Council is taking exception to the Boy Scouts is an outrage. With so much to fix, why are they so willing to instead hobble an organization trying to help people?"

Project 21 said the focus on the Scouts' prohibition of open homosexuals is wrong. That condemnation had come from city councilman Darrell Clarke, who told the New York Times, "you cannot be in a city-owned facility being subsidized by the taxpayers and not have language in your lease that talks about nondiscrimination."

Scouting spokesman Gregg Shields said such "open homosexuality" would be inconsistent with the group's values. That policy was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 when it ruled the Boy Scouts of America is a private organization that can set its own membership rules under the First Amendment.

The headquarters building, the Marks Center, was built by the BSA, but the half-acre parcel of land is owned by the city. The city council voted last year to renege on its ongoing $1-a-year lease and decided to set the rent at $200,000 a year, something BSA leaders say they cannot pay and still serve the 69,000 youths who benefit from their programs.

"If the Boy Scouts were anti-God, championed homosexuality and were anti-establishment, I would venture to say they would find themselves welcome in Philadelphia," said Massie. "It's the fact that they stick to and seek to promote a responsible and reasonable code of ethics that makes them a target of the anti-family left that tends to dominate urban governments such as Philadelphia's these days."

The nonprofit group, sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since the 1990s.

A spokesman for the Philadelphia Scouts, Jeff Jubelirer, told WND there would be several significant issues to address should the city pursue an eviction. He said there are about 75 other organizations in Philadelphia with similar building or land-use arrangements as the Scouts.

Their original agreement was that the city allowed the Scouts to use the city land in perpetuity for $1 a year, but the Scouts would have to build their own building and maintain it. That was the agreement on which the Council decided to renege.

The city "is making a value judgment" about the Scouts, because the other organizations are not being given the same ultimatums and deadlines, he said. "They're all great organizations. There's nothing wrong with them," he said. And they have lease arrangements that range from payments of $1 to $100 a year for various uses.

One such institution is the Catholic Church, which does not allow women ministers, he noted. "How are they going to justify differentiation in treatment," he wondered. "There are wonderful arts organizations, museums, a public radio station. They're on that list."

He said the other issue is the improvements the Scouts have made to the land, including the building and the $2 million in renovations done in just recent years. The original agreement envisioned the Scouts continuing to use the land "in perpetuity," so will those improvements then be reimbursed if the city reneges, he wondered.

And if that city agreement isn't upheld, he asked, are there other agreements that likewise will simply be abandoned?

Jubilerer said the city, as of now, is applying its pressure to a single group, and not taking into consideration that all groups in similar circumstances should be treated similarly.

The campaign against the Boy Scouts has been pursued by Romulo Diaz, the city solicitor, who, according to Philadelphia media reports, is an open homosexual. He had set the Dec. 3 deadline. The Scouts, however, "do not feel obliged to respond to that date," Jubelirer said. And Diaz followed up with a statement the city would "respect" the Scouting organization's right to respond before it takes further steps.

Such issues were virtually nonexistent before 2000. That year, a challenge was raised by homosexuals to the private organization's policy and the dispute went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed the Boy Scouts right to set membership requirements.

Then activist groups turned their sights on property arrangements such as in Philadelphia, where the Scouts have been using the donated property for years.

Former WND columnist Hans Zeiger, who wrote a book about the Scouts and their battles, "Get Off My Honor: The Assault on the Boy Scouts of America," said the Boy Scouts since 1911 have been reaching out to the disabled, racial and ethnic minorities, Native Americans and inner city children with the lessons of right and wrong.

"When it comes to a Scout troop, sexual orientation is an issue that goes beyond differences in skin color or economic status. It affects such matters as tenting arrangements and the development of pre-teenage masculinity in a close-knit group of boys and men," he wrote.

"So here's what I say to the radical Left in the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed … Take away the funding. Seize the 75-year-old headquarters building. The Scouts can survive without it," he wrote at the time.

In a column, Robert Knight of the Culture and Media Institute of the Media Research Center cited the underlying unfairness of such a decision in Philadelphia.

Knight, in his critique of a Washington Post report on the dispute, noted that the Scouts "built the building with their own money, and then gave it to the city in 1928."

He also noted the Scouts' lease was "in perpetuity" but the city simply decided to renege.

"The Scouts bar openly homosexual Scoutmasters and members for moral reasons and for the sake of protecting young boys from possible harm, not because they are motivated by bigotry or prejudice," he wrote. "The Post article read as if the Scouts have no rational reason for wanting to determine whether prospective leaders or members are attracted sexually to males."

WND recently reported citizens outraged by the city's ultimatum crashed the e-mail system of the Philadelphia mayor's office.

About 150,000 Boy Scout-related e-mails were removed from the city's e-mail system, reported the Bulletin newspaper of Philadelphia.

"We were deluged," said Terry Phillis, chief information officer for Mayor John Street. "We pulled the messages off so they wouldn't take the system down. It had to be done to protect system integrity."

City officials in San Francisco and Boston have made similar decisions to displace the Scouts because of the group's behavior code.

WND also reported earlier this year a Scouts victory when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit dismissed a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the Defense Department from allowing the Scouts to hold its National Jamboree every four years at Fort A.P. Hill in Fredericksburg, Va.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59201

The Boy Scouts in our state have lost funding from United Way and a lot of other companies because of their discriminatory ways. Personally, I think that is the way it should be. If they cannot accept everyone as they are, then they do not need public monies.

My son refused to join the Boy Scouts. My friend is some council leader or something out here and has tried for years to get him to join. My son flat out told them he would never be part of a group that knowingly left people out because they were different.

Are they cutting funding to the United Nego Collge Fund for their discriminatory ways ?

How are they discriminatory? They are a foundation started to assist people of color. Boy Scouts was started to include ALL boys in scouting. Not just the straight ones or religious ones.

Originally Posted by tigger4

How are they discriminatory? They are a foundation started to assist people of color. Boy Scouts was started to include ALL boys in scouting. Not just the straight ones or religious ones.

The prohibition against openly homosexual LEADERS is to protect the BOYS from sexual predators. Women are actively discouraged from going on camping trips for the same reasons ... in the event that a mom does go on a camp-out, they are required to tent a certain distance from the Scouts. We are required to aviod even the appearance of "impropriety". Do you honestly have a problem with this policy ?

It is a well established practice of sexual predators to place themselves in a postion to earn the trust of those they wish to use and abuse. Not all gay men are pedaphiles .... but is it appropraite to set a precendent where they go camping for a week or weekend with minimal supervison with a group of impressionable young boys ?

This policy has been in place since the begining of BSA - and was in place at the time of the original agreement between the Cradle of Liberty Council and the City Council of Philadelphia. Do they now void a legal contract because they want too? In that case, the UNCF should cut me a check for my tuition.

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

The prohibition against openly homosexual LEADERS is to protect the BOYS from sexual predators. Women are actively discouraged from going on camping trips for the same reasons ... in the event that a mom does go on a camp-out, they are required to tent a certain distance from the Scouts. We are required to aviod even the appearance of "impropriety". Do you honestly have a problem with this policy ?

It is a well established practice of sexual predators to place themselves in a postion to earn the trust of those they wish to use and abuse. Not all gay men are pedaphiles .... but is it appropraite to set a precendent where they go camping for a week or weekend with minimal supervison with a group of impressionable young boys ?

This policy has been in place since the begining of BSA - and was in place at the time of the original agreement between the Cradle of Liberty Council and the City Council of Philadelphia. Do they now void a legal contract because they want too? In that case, the UNCF should cut me a check for my tuition.

More straight men are pedophiles than gays. So, that kind of blows that whole theory out the window.

They don't even allow gay boys to be members.

Girl Scouts allow everyone to join. We have dads who go on camping trips they just stay in a different tent. As a matter of fact, no Girl Scout leader is allowed to stay in the same tent as their troop. No adult is allowed to be in the tent or cabin with them.

I still will never support an organization that discriminates against little boys who are gay or don't believe in God. I think it is wrong.

Girl Scouts allow everyone to join. We have dads who go on camping trips they just stay in a different tent. As a matter of fact, no Girl Scout leader is allowed to stay in the same tent as their troop. No adult is allowed to be in the tent or cabin with them.

Girl Scouts also have a prohibition against OPENLY GAY LEADERS. Two leaders are REQUIRED to be in the cabin with the girls - at no time can a single leader ( male or female ) be alone with single Scout ( this applies to the Girl Scouts, Cub SCouts and Boy Scouts ). Male Leaders ( and they have to be a registered Leader which means a background check ) are required to sleep in seperate accomadations at least 20 yards from where the girls are sleeping.


f your children have refused to be Scouts and I would assume that you are not a Scout Leader, how did you come by your "knowledge" of the rules and regs concerning Scouts? I have attended several training sessions as I am a registered Leader in all three orginizations.

They don't even allow gay boys to be members.

I have NEVER heard this ... is this in a Council near you ?

More straight men are pedophiles than gays. So, that kind of blows that whole theory out the window.

But a pedaphile who is attracted to young boys would statisticly be more interested in being a BSA Leader then one who is interested in toddlers, correct. We have no toddlers in BSA. So that becomes a circular arguement.

I still will never support an organization that discriminates against little boys who are gay or don't believe in God. I think it is wrong.

That is your priveledge.

"Little boys" are in their formative years and we do our best to protect them from inappropriate influences - anyone who would be interested in them sexually ( male or female ) do not belong in a position of a mentor where they could abuse the trust the children ( or the parents ) have given us.

If you do not believe in God - why would you *want* to join an organization which holds the motto "God and Country" ? It is a volentary assosication - I don't think anyone is "forced" to join any of the Scouting groups.

But this is about a City Council going back on a contract due to a long standing policy of the BSA which was in affect at the time the contract was initialy agreed to.

I have been a Girl Scout leader for over 10 years. I am a council chair for our local council, and have sat on the state chair for the past 5 years.

There are no rules about lesbian leaders in the National Girl Scout council. And if a local council is not allowing lesbian leaders they are in direct violation of the rules.

With all your experiance I am surprised by the gaps in your knowlegde and the venom in your view of the BSA.