IGF CultureWatch

First appeared Oct. 20, 1999 in the Chicago Free Press.

AS I WRITE, the Boy Scouts of America is considering a proposal to set up a panel to study the current ban on gay Scouts and adult leaders. They may as well do it: It commits them to nothing. When you want to stall, appoint a panel to study something.

Do the Boy Scouts have good reasons for their gay ban? Of course they do. They are concerned that parents will withdraw their boys from Scouting if the Scouts allow gays. They worry that conservative churches that sponsor Scout troops will stop participating (Two-thirds of Scout troops are sponsored by churches.) They are terrified that a horde of parents will sue them over charges of sexual behavior if the Scouts can be construed as enabling them by allowing gays.

But these are not the reasons they discuss in public. Instead, they fall back on more principled-sounding arguments. Are those arguments any good? Most are not.

The Scouts say they are a private, quasi-religious organization and not "a public accommodation." But they also say they are "open to all boys," which sounds very public. Further, the Boy Scouts are chartered by Congress, and numerous government agencies from police and fire departments to school districts sponsor Scout troops. They could not do that for a religious organization.

Further, the Scouts and some individual troops solicit and receive funding, equipment and meeting space from all levels of government. They clearly compromise their private status by taking benefits that are paid for with tax money extracted from all of us, gays included.

The Scouts claim that they have always banned gays, citing the Scout oath to be "morally straight." But it is easy to find in the huge Oxford English Dictionary that in the early years of this century when the Scout oath was written "straight" meant "honest, upright, candid." (It is still used that way sometimes.) One looks in vain for any recorded use of "straight" at that time to mean "heterosexual." That usage was not generally adopted until the 1960s and 1970s.

Should gays then want courts (the government) to force the Scouts to change their policy? I am inclined to think not.

The Scouts also claim freedom of association for their organization. However much we may not like this particular invocation of it, freedom of association is an important principle for gays, as for any minority, and one we should not want to see compromised, even for a short term gain. We relied heavily on arguments for freedom of association during the early years of the gay movement when we had to defend our right to form gay clubs, gay political groups and gay student groups. It is no less important a principle now that our right to form gay groups is no longer generally contested. It might be contested again sometime.

Freedom of association also plays a role in supporting everything from women's coffee houses and gay male bathhouses to gay-specific parades and perhaps even whom we live with.

It may be useful to think of associational freedom as an extension of our vitally important right to privacy. Freedom of association simply extends the boundaries of your privacy to include your ability to determine who you share your life with and interact with in pursuing shared goals. This includes everything from whom you invite into your home -- and whom you exclude -- to whom you want to include in your club, religious group or civic organization.

So I end up concluding that, however much I dislike it, the Scouts should be allowed to keep their ban on gays -- but only if they give up every single government charter and sponsorship, their free meeting space, funding, equipment and other benefits. No gay tax money for anti-gay discriminators.

Are we then stuck with tolerating an anti-gay Boy Scouts. Not for long I think. Businesses in the free market and broad changes in civil society will induce the Scouts to change their policy without government coercion. Here is why:

The social action/social policy arm of the United Methodist Church issued a statement on Oct. 10 calling on the Scouts to abandon their anti-gay policy. The statement read:

"While the General Board of Church and Society would like to enthusiastically affirm and encourage this continuing partnership of the church and scouting, we cannot due to the Boy Scouts of America's discrimination against gays. This discrimination conflicts with our Social Principles."

The statement is particularly important because the United Methodist Church, the nation's second largest Protestant denomination, is one of the largest sponsors of Boy Scout troops -- nearly 12,000 troops that include more than 420,000 boys. A policy statement by so important a supporter can have a powerful persuasive effect. And it will not be the last.

A bellwether of another major source of pressure came to light at a September awards ceremony for business supporters of the Boy Scouts in Providence, R.I.

After receiving an award for his company's support of Scouting, one corporate executive told the Scout group that he disagreed with the policy of banning gays. Another pointedly informed the Scouts that the gay ban violated his company's "commitment to diversity." Yet another executive who won an award two years ago said he did not attend this year's ceremony because the gay ban was contrary to his company's policy.

The extremely popular mayor of Providence said that the city would be forced to "reexamine" its financial support for the Scouts. And a representative of Southeastern New England United Way noted that the giant charity "disapproved" of the gay ban.

The Boy Scouts of America will change on its own when it can assure worried parents that it was encouraged to change by its own supporters.