Boy Scouts Lose Philadelphia Lease in Gay-Rights Fight

The Cradle of Liberty Council of the Boy Scouts of America will be evicted from a Philadelphia municipal building for refusing to denounce the organization’s homosexuality prohibition.

By IAN URBINA
Published: December 6, 2007
NY Times

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 4 — For three years the Philadelphia council of the Boy Scouts of America held its ground. It resisted the city’s request to change its discriminatory policy toward gay people despite threats that if it did not do so, the city would evict the group from a municipal building where the Scouts have resided practically rent free since 1928.

Hailed as the birthplace of the Boy Scouts, the Beaux Arts building is the seat of the seventh-largest chapter of the organization and the first of the more than 300 council service centers built by the Scouts around the country over the past century.

But over the years the fight between the city and the Scouts was about more than this grandiose structure in Center City.

Municipal officials said the clash stemmed from a duty to defend civil rights and an obligation to abide by a local law that bars taxpayer support for any group that discriminates. Boy Scout officials said it was about preserving their culture, protecting the right of private organizations to remain exclusive and defending traditions like requiring members to swear an oath of duty to God and prohibiting membership by anyone who is openly homosexual.

This week the Boy Scouts made their last stand and lost.

The rest of the Times story is here. As a former scout I cannot begin to express my pride in their committments, and my opposition to the bullying of political correctness.

A close friend of mine has been a scout leader for three decades. In his experience men show up regularly who want to "help out" and it doesn't take long to figure out that they are there to help themselves not scouting. It's the old story: they asked Dillinger why he robbed banks and he replied, "Because that's where they keep the money." That ought to give pause to everyone who has the solemn and sacred task of ensuring the safety and well-being of children. You'd think that a group that holds to "church as a safe place" would have second thoughts about "restraining discipline."