Posted on 12/06/2007 11:04:30 AM PST by yorkie
For three years the Philadelphia council of the Boy Scouts of America held its ground. It resisted the city’s request to change its discriminatory policy toward gay people despite threats that if it did not do so, the city would evict the group from a municipal building where the Scouts have resided practically rent free since 1928.
Hailed as the birthplace of the Boy Scouts, the Beaux Arts building is the seat of the seventh-largest chapter of the organization and the first of the more than 300 council service centers built by the Scouts around the country over the past century.
But over the years the fight between the city and the Scouts was about more than this grandiose structure in Center City.
Municipal officials said the clash stemmed from a duty to defend civil rights and an obligation to abide by a local law that bars taxpayer support for any group that discriminates. Boy Scout officials said it was about preserving their culture, protecting the right of private organizations to remain exclusive and defending traditions like requiring members to swear an oath of duty to God and prohibiting membership by anyone who is openly homosexual.
This week the Boy Scouts made their last stand and lost.
“At the end of the day, you can not be in a city-owned facility being subsidized by the taxpayers and not have language in your lease that talks about nondiscrimination,” said City Councilman Darrell L. Clarke, who represents the district where the building is located. “Negotiations are over.”
Mr. Clarke said talks ended this week when the deadline passed for the local chapter to change its policy; on June 1 the group will be evicted.
“Since we were founded, we believe that open homosexuality would be inconsistent with the values..
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You are aware, are you not, that the Boy Scouts themselves built the building in 1928, then gifted it to the city, in return for a perpetual lease back to them to use it for $1 per year?
Where is the squeeze from the Prez on the city?
I had no idea you found all this info. Thanks for the ping.
The City of (insert a perversion here).
ping
Yes, I am aware of that. Are you aware that the lot was city land, and that the lease included a clause that allowed for the termination of the deal with one year's notice?
I was not.
However, from the information you presented upthread, it isn’t entirely clear who owned, or now owns, the land on which the building was built.
I don't think there's any dispute that the city owns the land now. If they didn't, how could they claim rent? From what I can figure out from the bits and pieces is that the land was owned by the city, part of the same parcel that the large adjacent park and the nearby museums were built on. The Scouts offered to build a building on one lot, then give it to the city in return for the $1/year rent, which was "perpetual," but included a clause that allowed the city to end it with one year's notice.
What I've noticed in all of this is that the Scouts don't seem to be claiming any particular legal leg to stand on. They're making a moral argument instead. It seems that if they did have some legal grounds to fight this, they'd be all over it.
But surely the rampant homophobia of an organization that won’t send boys on camping trips with homosexual men is the most pressing problem in Philadelphia today. Granted, if someone hangs a noose in a warehouse and a black guy wanders in and sees it, it might rival the Scout horror. But to even think that murders, rapes, muggings, assaults, armed robberies, urban decay, drug dealers, STDs, teen pregnancy, illegitimacy, and neighborhoods that resemble the Third World are an equivalent problem shows your lack of perspective.
Just for the record, do you support “gay rights” legislation and do you favor booting the scouts out of these facilities unless they agree to accept homosexuality?
Hmm. "gay rights legislation" covers a lot of territory. You'll have to be more specific. Let's say I don't believe in special privileges for anyone, and I don't like discrimination in general. On gay marriage, I usually come back to asking why the government's in the marriage business at all. Do I favor booting the scouts out in this case? No, I don't. I think the Scouts do good work. But since I'm neither a Scout nor a resident of the Philadelphia metro area, I don't feel much passion for this particular issue either way. I'm just an interested onlooker.
I agree that if that's true they should be all over it, but there are a lot of examples of where they clearly are on the moral and legal side, and yet they do nothing.
I can't come up with a specific case right now, but I do remember O'Reilly taking the Scouts to task for just letting someone run all over them when they had the legal high ground without as much as a whimper.
The problem facing the Scouts legally is the precedent set in the Berkeley Sea Scouts case, which I linked to above in the thread. It’s a similar case in that the Sea Scouts were getting free dock space at the city marina, but when the city decided they didn’t like the Scouts gay policy, they took away that deal, offering instead to let them rent at normal market rate. The Scouts lost in the California Supreme Court (no surprise there), and the USSC declined to review, so there it stands.
Easily done. Just hire former Philly mayor Wilson Goode. He’s an expert in firebombing Philadelphia city blocks.
Yes, I guess I do lack that kind of perspective. :-).
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
City of “Brotherly” Love.
The problem with laws against discrimination, is that to enforce some of them, you have to engage in other types of discrimination. For example, this Philadelphia ordinance forbidding "discrimination" against homosexuals, requires discrimination against people of faith who do not sanction homosexuality. You can only access certain public facilities, or avail yourself of certain public benefits, if you reject your faith's teachings on homosexuality. This is an inherent problem when you start banning "discrimination" based on conduct.
The city of Philadelphia is basically saying that traditional moral values which find unnatural sexual conduct to be immoral are not something to be encouraged. In fact, they're to be marginalized or suppressed on behalf of male-on-male sodomy, which the city has chosen to honor and elevate to a position of legitimacy.
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