Formated for easy reading:Thought-police bureaucrats punish group with fees that apply only to it
By Harold Johnson Pacific Legal Foundation Attorney and counsel for one of Sea Scouts challenging Berkeley's policy. 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