Philly Boy Scouts tell National org to get bent over anti-gay policies

[giza]

For those of you who aren't too familiar with the Boy Scouts of America, they have had a long standing policy of discriminating against gay people. If you're gay, you're not allowed to be a scout or a leader. Their justification for doing this is that part of the Scout Oath has the phrase "morally straight" in it. That's right, the Old White Men who run the BSA say that being gay is immoral.

I am an Eagle Scout and I find this policy repugnant. Imagine my joy when I just read today that Philadelphia's Cradle of Liberty Council pretty much told the national organization to get bent with regards to that policy by voting to end discrimination against gays:

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/education/5972758.htm (Philadelphia Inquirer article)

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/5981415.htm (Editorial)

The best part of the first article is where Gregg Shields from the National Council said, "We recognize that not everybody agrees with our policy, and we respect their opinions, but we ask their tolerance of the values that we hold." Ah, so I guess his definition of "tolerance" means "excluding people whose sexual orientation we don't like". Asshole.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out, but I'll be sending a note to the Cradle of Liberty Council shortly telling them that I support their actions and hope that more councils follow suit.

Comments

[giza.livejournal.com]

I did a Google search and was unable to find any evidence of racism. However, I found an interesting FAQ at http://users.aol.com/coffeeweb/LO/faq6.htm (http://users.aol.com/coffeeweb/LO/faq6.htm) which talks about black people who are in Scouting. It was an interesting read.

>And yet, for all that, they are still a private organization
>and still free to set their membership requirements to whatever
>they see fit. It's not a govt office

It's not quite that simple. Part of the thing that complicates this is that the Boy Scouts are a non-profit, a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization. I've read things that the IRS apparently isn't very happy about this. That could have drastic consequences for the Boy Scouts if their non-profit status gets yanked.

Also, I remember during a flareup way back when I was in high school, the Boy Scouts said, "We're a private organization, we can do this if we want". This prompted some groups who contributed lots of money (like the United Way) to say, "okay, we're not giving you any more money". Oh, how things were different then. It was okay for the BSA to do what they wanted to but not for their sponsors to do the same. I saw a bunch of whiny articles in Scouting Magazine about "these companies trying to force THE GAY AGENDA on us". It was really unbelievable.

As I said in my post, I still think that the national council is run by a bunch of narrow-minded Old White Men who don't like anyone who isn't like them. (They apparently don't like women in leadership positions, either, but that is an entirely different rant. Ask me on FurryMUCK sometime.)