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Posted on 09/19/2002 5:37:52 AM PDT by luv2ndamend
A Washington, D.C. court hearing last Tuesday — 9/10 — offered a sobering reminder that 9/11 did not, in fact, change "everything." The proceedings, at the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, dealt with a government rebuke of the Boy Scouts of America last year for dismissing two Washington-area Scout leaders because they're gay. The Scouts asked the court to overturn the June 2001 command by the District of Columbia Human Rights Commission that Michael Geller, 39, and Ronald Pool, 40, be readmitted as adult members and receive $100,000 in damages.
Although the Commission submitted no briefs of its own (angry members of Congress had denied the agency funding to defend its decision), lawyers for Geller and Pool didn't give an inch at the hearing. They insisted that the Scouts cannot be allowed to escape the District's anti-discrimination law, and the hefty fine was right and just.
Carla Kerr, an attorney for the Scouts, reports that the judges questioned the Geller and Pool attorneys aggressively. But even if the appellate ruling favors the Scouts, the fact that they had to go to court to win back their rights highlights some disturbing continuities between pre- and post-911 America. Not all of today's agents of destruction work with bombs, bullets or box cutters. There are saboteurs in coats and ties as well - social and cultural saboteurs, some with government or academic status, who continue their long-running siege against venerable institutions that have nourished the nation's soul. The Scouts remain a prime target. They are loathed by the Left for resisting reeducation on sexual morality and for transmitting a cultural framework, stressing God and country, that was supposed to be marginalized by now.
Most of all, perhaps, the Scouts are hated simply as an obstacle to the Left's Taliban-like project of imposing a general conformity of thought on the country. Lovers of liberty - even those who might disagree with Scouting's membership policies - should toast the Scouts' tenacious stand for the First Amendment and the right not to be PC.
The District of Columbia assault on the Scouts may be unique in one respect: its unusually direct defiance of the United States Supreme Court. In the 2000 case of Dale v. Boy Scouts, the Court settled the question that the D.C. bureaucrats have tried to reopen. A five-justice majority ruled that the Scouts are free to follow their own philosophical precepts. Therefore, government - New Jersey, in the Dale case - can't compel the Scouts to admit avowed homosexuals as leaders.
The Commission claimed that the case it dealt with differs from the case of New Jersey assistant scoutmaster James Dale because Pool and Geller were not public about their homosexuality. But the Supreme Court's teaching in Dale still applies: a private, philosophically based organization is free to craft its own creed and tailor membership rules accordingly.
The Commission also accused Scouting's leaders of lying, in effect, when they say that Scouting considers homosexuality incompatible with the Scout Oath's pledge to stay "morally straight." The Commission alleged that the Scouts haven't held this belief historically. It touted as "evidence" the fact that formal position statements were drafted only in recent years. If this line of argument sounds familiar, it's because New Jersey tried to sell it to the Supreme Court in Dale. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist declined the invitation to instruct a private organization on what it does and does not believe. The Court in Dale accepted Scouting's own interpretation of the Scout Oath and the Scout Law.
So the District of Columbia Human Rights Commission has demonstrated about as much respect for Dale as southern school districts showed for Brown v. Board of Education when they waged "massive resistance" to desegregation orders in the 1950s. Like Brown, Dale is a civil rights decision; it affirms liberty of association and freedom from thought codes. A "Human Rights" commission worthy of the name would honor Dale, not subvert it.
Most of the recent government assaults on the Scouts have not been as shamelessly frontal. The trend is to try to coerce rather than openly compel. For instance, there's the scheme of shunning, as practiced in San Francisco, where local judges are now barred from participating in Scouting. There's stigmatizing, as Connecticut has attempted by dropping the Scouts from the list of charities that state employees can support through payroll deduction. There's singling out for the withholding of public benefits, as Berkeley has done by starting to charge a Scout-affiliated group, the Sea Scouts, for use of the city's marina. No other nonprofit faces such a requirement. High school teacher Eugene Evans now must pay $532 a month out of his pocket so the Sea Scouts' ship can berth in the marina and 20 or so boys can sail the Bay on weekends and learn carpentry and plumbing by working on the ship during the week. Because he's covering berthing costs, Evans can no longer afford to pay membership fees for boys from poorer neighborhoods around Oakland and Berkeley. Some, including some black and Latino kids, have had to drop out.
These anti-Scout ploys raise constitutional issues by attempting to do indirectly what the Supreme Court has said cannot be done directly - force Scouting to abandon its First Amendment rights. A long, twilight struggle of legal battles is assured.
The Scouts are learning that the totalitarian temptation survived the Berlin Wall; it's an impulse that isn't necessarily confined to nations patrolled by tanks and jackboots. Totalitarian arrangements share a principle: independent, voluntary associations aren't allowed. A totalitarian community "is made absolute by the removal of all forms of membership and identification which might, by their existence, compete with the new order," wrote sociologist Robert Nisbet. "It is, further, made absolute by the insistence that all thought, belief, worship, and membership be within the structure of the State."
Tocqueville saw this phenomenon in fledgling form on his home continent 170 years ago: "In all European nations some associations cannot be formed until the state has examined their statutes and authorized their existence. In several countries efforts are made to extend this rule to all associations. One can easily see whither success in that would lead."
The Scouts' fight, then, is for the survival of an authentically private sector — a sphere where beliefs can be embraced and explored without preclearance, editing or censorship by the state.
"They hate freedom." President Bush's words about terror networks also describe the bullies who would force Scouting to march to a new and "progressive" tune. By standing their ground, the Scouts put themselves on the front line of today's war against tyranny, as surely as the soldiers tracking Al-Qaida or any battalions that might be bound for Baghdad.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Harold Johnson is an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation.
I agree with you. But the City was not simply trying to disassociate itself from the Scouts. It was trying to force the Scouts to readmit those admits and pay them $100,000. You're barking up the wrong tree.
Yendu Bwam was accusing this city of wanting pedophiles to molest boys. That is slander. They only want to associate with groups who abide by their non-discrimination policies.
No, they want to penalize groups with whom they don't agree, and force them to accept leaders they don't want.
Yendu was right in pointing out how this isn't as much a gay/straight issue as it is a question of putting adults in charge of adolescents to whom they are sexually attracted. No way I'd ever want to have a 20 year old male scoutmaster in charge of a Girl Scout group of teeneage girls. But is that "discrimination" because of heterosexuality?
Duh. Because that does not prevent homosexual molestations. That's the answer. Prior to the scouts' strong policies aimed at preventing homosexual molestations, they had hundreds of such each year. Of course they threw out the perpetrators, but by then the damage to young impressionable boys had been done. If you care more about young teenage boys than about the precious feelings of homosexual men who feel they 'need' to be with your sons on overnight camping trips, then you don't put them in a place where many of them have sexual attraction issues. Further, if you care about what your children learn regarding homosexuality, and you disagree with what most homosexual men believe, then you also don't put them in close contact with your sons.
Actually, you may be right. Billy Dale worked in the White House travel office and was fired by President Clinton. I have no idea if he was ever involved with the BSA.
James Dale was the Assistant Scoutmaster who sued the BSA to be allowed to continue as a Scout Leader.
OK, Emmylou, that's fair. We teach our kids that homosexuals suffer from a type of disorder, and that homosexual behavior is NOT normal. We teach them not to blame homosexuals for that disorder. We teach them (as is consonant with our Christian religion) that we should love everyone with all our hearts, including homosexuals. We teach them that the sexual acts to which many homosexuals are attracted (like anal intercourse) are filthy and disgusting, and that we should feel sorry for those who feel compelled to engage in them. We teach them that these sexual practices are the primary cause of the spread of AIDs in our country. We teach our sons that homosexual men may have sexual attractions to them, and that they must protect themselves from and be wary about such. We teach them, that while we should have compassion for homosexuals, they are inappropriate as scoutmasters.
Take that back, emmylou. I did not say that and you know it.
Thank you. The implication is that the city is far more concerned about the feelings of homosexual men than it is about the welfare of teenage boys. A fair number of homosexual men are molestors and they teach and model things to kids that parents do not agree with, and which most consider harmful. You've made your choice. We'll make ours. Ours favors kids; yours does not.
The girl scouts do not allow men to take part in any girl scout camping trips.
Here is something I found on the Girl Scout Website:
Girl Scouts is looking for volunteers who represent the diversity of the world we live in — men as well as women, senior citizens as well as younger adults, people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds — anyone who's willing to make a difference in the lives of girls.
As far as I'm concerned, it's one thing if some of the dads tag along on a camping trip with their wives. It's a whole nother thing when the GSA recruits men from the general public to be leaders, as I saw on a poster in an airport a few years ago, encouraging men to become GSA leaders. I was appalled.
Discrimination is not always a bad thing. Would you want a guy who has sex with animals to be taking your kid out into the woods? Would you want an 18-yr. old guy taking out your 16-yr. old daughter camping - over a period of four days? Would you want that guy to be changing with your daughter? Would you want a married guy who brags about his extramarital affairs taking your sons out camping? Would you want an alcholic taking your children out camping? In the raising of our kids, parents MUST discriminate between what they consider good for their kids and what they consider bad for their kids. Homosexuals wish to force parents to accept something they don't agree is good for their kids. You wish to deny parents the right to raise their kids as they see fit. That is not only unconstitutional, but immoral. Homosexuals have the right to live their lives as they see fit. So do we.
About 1/3 of Girl Scout officers are lesbians. Girl Scouts promotes abortion, acceptance (rather than tolerance) of homosexuality, a refusal to acknowledge that a belief in God is something beneficial, takes no issue with active teen sexuality (and offers advice on contraception to teen girls who do not wish to inform their parents), multiculturalism, moral relativism, etc. etc. If you are interested in a more Boy Scoutly alternative for girls, check out American Heritage Girls.
Fair enough also, Emmylou. I just want you to understand that I have tremendous compassion for homosexuals (as I do for anyone with a serious problem). Peace.
As a GSA leader, I was able to shield my daughter from the worst of the GSA agenda, but I still wonder what kind of influences she was subjected to at GSA camp. Girl Scouts don't allow parents/troop leaders at summer camp. Boy Scouts REQUIRE troop leaders to accompany the boys.
One of the things that particularly angered me was the hostility toward religion that kept cropping up in the Girl Scouts. For instance, there was a 75th anniversary long weekend campout here in S. Calif. for 15,000 girls and their leaders. The Catholic scouts had to threaten a boycott before the organizers would allow a priest onto the grounds to say Sunday Mass. The organizers had planned a non-denominational service and, by golly, if the Catholics didn't like it, that was tough!
The organizers did finally relent, but scheduled the Mass for 6:30 am! At least the Catholic girls didn't have to miss any of the fun program to go to Mass. They scheduled the nondenominational service at the same time as some of the fun stuff, so the girls and leaders would have to choose between the two. :-(
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A couple of girls a couple of years ago wrote a book entitled something like: "Everything I needed to know about being a lesbian I learned in Girl Scouts." In that book, they claimed and gave evidence for an overwhelming lesbian presence in the Girl Scout hierarchy (and talked about their lesbian experiences with girl scout leaders). I have heard the same from many more indirect sources. Girl Scouts today, in general, takes no stand on teen sex, takes a supportive stand on lesbianism, is pro-abortion, and takes no stand on a belief in God. In contrast, Boy Scouts discourages teen sex, does not believe homosexual men are appropriate role models for teenage boys, does not promote abortion and insists that a belief in God is good for young men. As another poster pointed out, it's outrageous that Girl Scouts doesn't allow parents to come to camp. Boy Scouts strongly encourages parents to do so.
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