Boy Scouts Want to Discriminate Using Public Dollars

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: