Posted on 02/28/2003 2:36:31 PM PST by laureldrive
Edited on 04/14/2004 10:05:53 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
We think of the frontiers of freedom as being patrolled by the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. But these days, the Boy Scouts of America and affiliated groups also stand guard. In courtrooms across the country, they're resisting a domestic strain of tyranny - the totalitarian impulse to police thought and enforce a government-sanctioned orthodoxy on social and cultural issues.The Scouts are loathed by many self-styled progressives for transmitting a code of commitment, stressing God and country, that was supposed to be marginalized by now. But they're not giving in to bureaucratic bullies who try to force them to shed "outmoded" beliefs on matters of sex and social values. Lovers of liberty - even those who might disagree with Scouting's principles - should toast their tenacity for the First Amendment and the right not to be PC.This controversy was supposed to have been settled by the U.S. Supreme Court three years ago. In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, a five-justice majority said that as a private, belief-based organization, the Scouts are free to craft their own membership rules; in particular, government can't order them to admit homosexuals as leaders. It follows that they're also within their rights to require that members profess a belief in God.But an alarming number of local and state officials refused to listen. In 2001, for instance, District of Columbia officials ordered the local Scouts to readmit two gays as adult leaders and pay $100,000 in damages. This decree was overturned by an appeals court, which noted that D.C. should take another look at Dale.Most of the current government assaults on the Scouts take the form of indirect coercion. There's shunning, as in San Francisco, where local judges are now barred from participating in Scouting. There's stigmatizing, as Connecticut and Portland, Ore., have attempted by excluding the Scouts from the charities that public employees may support through payroll deduction.There's also selective denial of public benefits. Berkeley leads the way by singling out the Sea Scouts for a fee to use the city's marina. After being permitted free use for 50 years, the Sea Scouts in 1998 were suddenly hit with a charge of more than $500 per month. No other nonprofit is required to pay to berth at the marina. The fee is imposed explicitly because of the Sea Scouts' affiliation with the Boy Scouts.High school teacher Eugene Evans, skipper of the Berkeley Sea Scouts' ship, pays the fee out of his pocket, so he can no longer cover membership costs for teenagers from poorer neighborhoods. Some have had to drop out.Unfortunately, a California court of appeal upheld Berkeley's punitive policy in November. The Sea Scouts have now asked the state Supreme Court to take the case. They cite the constitutional rule against "viewpoint discrimination" in the public sector. In other words, if Berkeley decides to offer free berthing to nonprofits - which it has done - it can't pick and choose recipients based on their beliefs or the beliefs of those they're associated with.Several recent "graduates" of the Berkeley Sea Scouts are now Marines stationed in the Persian Gulf. One of these young leathernecks is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Berkeley's anti-Scout policy. All are following in a long tradition of Sea Scouts stepping forward in the nation's hours of need. More than 100,000 Sea Scouts volunteered after Pearl Harbor. Admiral Chester Nimitz reportedly said that the Sea Scouts were crucial to the Navy's ability to regroup after that disaster. But if Berkeley officials feel any remorse at targeting such a worthy group, they haven't revealed it.Today, the Boy Scouts' and Sea Scouts' fight is for the survival of a free and robust private sector, a sphere where all may choose their beliefs and affiliations without preclearance, editing or censorship by the state, and without fear of official discrimination or reprisal. For defending this basic principle of a free society, the Scouts deserve a hearty salute.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.ocregister.com ...
I was referring specifically to the claim that some folks cannot afford the SEA SCOUTS membership fee of seven dollars per year, and that the city of Berkeley is somehow to blame.
You still weren't reading closely enough. A private citizen was paying that membership fee for a lot of Scouts in that area. Now, that same guy has to pay the $500/month berthing fee. That way I figure it, that's the annual fee for 850 or so kids.
The problem with your argument, madg, is that there are plenty of non-profits that have political agendas, even if they are not recognized as such by other liberals. Berkely is carving out which political agendas are appropriate, which are not, and subsidizing them with tax dollars. Berkely should follow the same rules schools have to when they let their facilities be used by various student groups.
You think because your social club has temporarily succeeded in stifling its opponent's public expressions that you are somehow deputized as one of 1984's thought police. Your badge is cheap tin and tarnishes easily.
He's wrong for a more fundamental reason. He asserts that the Boy Scouts unjustly discriminate against him and other men for what they are, when in fact it is a behavior choice that is unwelcome.
These same men assert they are unjustly denied the right to marry when in fact they are only held to the same standard as other men: they may only marry women.
The moment you accept as true the false claim there are more than two sexes in the human race, you have already lost the central battle in this culture war. Arguing over taxes dollars, and donations are meaningless skirmishes by comparison.
That’s really funny.
That's not exactly true. Hate crime laws do nothing but give harsher penalties for existing laws (battery, murder, etc) when they are committed while disparaging a person for their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Now, while there aren't many instances of "straight-bashing" or "male-bashing", there are plenty of examples of black-on-white crime that is explicitly racially-driven, and they almost universally reject applying hate-crime statutes. The most egregious and stunning example would be the Wichita Horror.
Secondly, many anti-discrimination laws do NOT include white males, as they are explicitly written to guarantee others the same rights as white males. Further, their application is almost universally for every other group. (Shall we look at the percentages of cases that favored white-males, and whine if they aren't close to the 33% population figure?)
Finally, there are multitudes of discrimination laws (Affirmative Action being the pre-eminent example) that allow institutions to discriminate against straight-white-males with the sanction of law. When any other group is similarly overlooked for circumstances of their birth, they have legal recourse today. I, as a straight-white-male, most assuredly do not. My life-long dreams of being the president of the NAACP, a few womens' colleges, NAMBLA, GLSEN, etc will never be realized, even though those groups, statistically and explicitly, shall always prevent "my kind" from achieving that position. I can't sue when publicly-offered scholarships refuse to consider "my kind", but a black person can sue if I were to privately offer a whites-only scholarship.
You can say that I'm included in the discrimination laws, but that is just as morally dishonest and obtuse as proclaiming that blacks were treated the same under law in the South the day after Jim Crow Laws were repealed.
Maybe he needs to retake biology to learn what the digestive system is used for.
My criminal law class is having a raging debate over this very point right now, with a case involving alcoholics being arrested for being intoxicated in public. (Are they being arrested for being addicts? For doing some wrong act that they cannot prevent themselves from doing? Or are they simply being arrested for committing an illegal act that they have control over?)
The distinction is a very fine one, and easy to get muddled. It also has wide-ranging implications in law.
Every living creature discriminates. When a creature chooses a mate, it discriminates. When a teacher gives a grade, he discriminates. When an NFL team picks a draft choice, they're discriminating. When a restaraunt hangs a MEN'S sign on the restroom doors, they're discriminating. What makes it wrong/illegal/immoral/unjust is when the lawful authorities (to whom the victim pays involuntary taxes to help guarantee their own protection) use unjust reasons to discriminate against them (most commonly, the circumstances of one's birth - gender, race, etc).
There is nothing illegal, immoral, or unjust about me telling my daughter that she cannot bring home a violent felon, a leper, or even a gay man... and the law cannot force me to invite them into my home. The Boy Scout's logic, that it would be innapropriate to put an unrelated adult in charge of defenseless minors of a gender to which that adult is attracted, is neither illegal, immoral, unethical, or unsound. The exact same decision of a family, to not let his adult male neighbor host their well-developed 14 year old daughter's sleep-over party, is and purely discriminatory... and rational... and legal... and proper.
E.g., addictive disorders, which are essentially mental and physical diseases. The homosexual lobby has already won the battle with the pointy-heads to have their particular pathology reclassifed as normal. Gay activists will take great offense at your equating the compulsive desire of a man to engage in serial high-risk acts of sodomy (and fisting, and felching, and golden showers etc.) with other men in public toilets with a disorder such as alcoholism.
By liberal fiat, the homosexual behavior disorder has been adjudged healthy, normal, and benign. If it were still considered by the medical community to be what it is--a disease-ridden life-shortening behavior disorder--men afflicted with it might be able to claim protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because their strategy denies them the use of that weapon, they rely on trying to prove their behavior disorder to be equivalent to gender, race, or ethnicity.
Like all liberals, they want the laws and public opinion to favor them in all cases, even contradictorily, rather than desiring a consistent system that treats everyone alike.
Kansas has no hate-crime law. I don't suppose you thought to check on that before bringing up the Witchita murder case, did you? And for the record, the two guys who did it were convicted and are on death row. Lack of a hate crime law really impeaded justice in their case, didn't it?
Thanks, HW.
So Madg will support prejudice, as long as it's against a group she doesn't like?
Somehow, that doesn't come as a revelation.
Mmm hmmm.
What can be said about gays who 'pretend they don't do it', Madg?
Actually, no, I didn't think to check. 42 states have them, so even if we both will pretend that I had that much investigative zeal but simply negelected to do so, we can say I was simply going with the odds. Thanks for the correction. I was just remembering the frustration on FR that it would not be prosecuted as a Hate Crime... I didn't recall any reasons given.
One could easily point out that the Boy Scouts will support discrimination so long as it isn't directed to them. The Scouts have the right to deny membership to anyone they want for any reason they choose. But then other people have the right to refuse to support the scouts for any reason that they choose to do so. Unless it can be shown that Berkley is holding the scouts to a different standard as any other non-profit agency then there is little the scouts can do to complain.
And if the Scouts choose to discrimnate, as is their right, then why can they complain when some organization chooses to discrimate against them?
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