Boy Scouts Want to Discriminate Using Public Dollars

Posted by Steven Reynolds, The All Spin Zone at 10:03 AM on May 28, 2008.

The Boy Scouts here in Philly want the city to support them to the tune of $200,000 per year. They’re suing for that “right,” feeling themselves to be entitled. They’ll lose, at least according to precedent, but this time they are using some particularly whiney courtroom strategies that go against what they claim to teach boys.

Commentary By: Steven Reynolds

We’ve had a long controversy here in Philadelphia. (I’ve written about this before, here and here.)The Cradle of Liberty Council of the Boy Scouts of America has long had a $1 lease on a fine building in a very expensive part of town. The national Boy Scouts won a Supreme Court ruling allowing them to discriminate in the last several years, sure. But the Boy Scouts are in a bind, Cradle of Liberty Council in particular. They don’t want to discriminate against gays and athiests as the national coucil tells them to do, at least not quite as much, but if they do discriminate, then the City of Philadelphia will have to follow its own laws. You see, it is against the law in Philadelphia to fund groups that discriminate. So what’s the solution? According to the Cradle of Liberty Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the solution is a lawsuit, demanding that the City of Philadelphia aid and abet their discriminatory policies by reducing their rent from $200,000 to $1 per year.

Now it has come down to it, here in Philly, that the Boy Scouts feel they are entitled to suck off the public teat, to soak up my tax dollars, even if they do treat my fellow citizens in a discriminatory manner. There are articles on the subject in both the Philly Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News this morning, and there’s a wonderful quote from Mayor Nutter on the situation in the Inquirer:

Mayor Nutter, asked about the lawsuit at a speaking engagement yesterday in Harrisburg, said: “The issue is very, very clear and has been clear for a very long time. . . . I do find it interesting that somehow, some way, the Girl Scouts have figured out how to provide services to all girls and not discriminate, and the Boy Scouts have not figured out how to do the same.

“Our position is, you cannot discriminate in terms of delivery of services on city property,” Nutter added. “The U.S. Supreme Court has opined that the Boy Scouts can have any rules that they want, and at the same time you can’t discriminate on public property.”

Bravo Mr. Mayor. What’s a bit upsetting is that the Cradle of Liberty Council has trotted out a “but Johnnie did it, so why can’t I?” defense in order to bolster their suit.

The lawsuit maintains that about 100 private organizations with membership criteria - including 15 youth groups - lease city property at rents of under $2,000 a year.

Only the Boy Scouts, the suit continues, have been threatened with eviction.

The lawsuit mentions the Roman Catholic Church of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which the suit says has paid a nominal rent for a church building in Pennypack Park since 1935; Zion Baptist Church, which pays $25 a year to lease three parcels of recreational land for the Clara Baldwin Home for seniors; and Women for Greater Philadelphia and the Colonial Dames of America, which have free perpetual leases for historic mansions in Fairmount Park.

“This city allows numerous organizations to use city-owned property and does not necessarily refuse them based on restrictions on membership,” said Center City lawyer Jason P. Gosselin, who filed the suit on behalf of the Cradle of Liberty Council.

Such whiney and juvenile defense of bad actions is something the Boy Scouts taught me to avoid. When I was a scout we were taught not to follow the crowd, but follow the ideals that made one a good and ethical man. I am angered at the Boy Scouts and their discriminatory policies, but I am ashamed that they would use such an ethically bankrupt and whiney excuse for the city to support those policies. Shame on them.

Tagged as: discrimination, lgbt, atheists, boy scouts, philadelphia