Boy Scout discrimination: It’s not just gays

December 8, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

As the Carpetbagger mentioned on Thursday, the city of Philadelphia has denied the Boy Scouts access to a building where the Scouts have for years enjoyed a sweetheart rental deal.

The Scouts have been meeting in the municipal Beaux Arts Building since 1928. They lease it from the city for the token sum of one dollar a year. They won’t be meeting there any more. The city has decided it does not want to subsidize a group that discriminates.

Most of the talk about the Boy Scouts and their discriminatory policies centers on homosexuality. If you’re gay, you can’t be a Scout leader. They’ll even kick out a young man who has been involved for years if he emerges from the closet while in a leadership position.

That’s abhorrent. But I want to take a moment today to focus on the other people the Boy Scouts discriminate against: atheists, agnostics, humanists and other religious skeptics. Although often overlooked, this form of discrimination by the Scouts is equally obnoxious. Yet I sometimes get the impression that if the Scouts would drop their anti-gay policies, most people would assume everything was cool.

Our Constitution guarantees religious freedom. By necessity, this must also include the right not to believe. It should be obvious that you can be a good citizen, a moral person and a patriotic American and not believe in God — although some of the public opinion polls I’ve seen show that a distressing amount of people have trouble grasping this concept (including, apparently, Mitt Romney).

Thankfully, our rights are not determined by polls (yet).

There was a time when most people encouraged, or at least tolerated, other forms of religious discrimination. Jews could not stay in certain hotels, join certain social clubs or get their children into some posh private academies.

Those prejudices fell some time ago. Indeed, they are even illegal now. They were fundamentally wrong, and we are a better nation for having discarded them. When are we going to ditch the last prejudice and admit that it’s OK to be an atheist?

There’s one last thing I’d like to say to the Boy Scout leadership about this: You could learn a lesson from the Girl Scouts. They used to require a religious oath. A few years back, they made it voluntary. A girl can still say the religious oath if she wants to, or she can use another that more accurately reflects her beliefs. It’s her call. The Religious Right threw a fit about this, but it does not seem to have had much affect on the organization.

If the Boy Scouts truly want to stand up for what’s best about America, they should give up their embrace of the last prejudice.

Seems to me they ought to give a special merit badge for those figure out that early in their lives that religion is Santa Claus for (supposed) grownups.

I’m glad Philly gave them the boot.

  • If you think it hasn’t had an impact on the girl scouts your dead wrong……

    Also it should be mentioned that the land is city property but the scouts built the building and have maintained it with major improvements. The scouts could request a reimbursement for the facility. The City wants a rent fee of $200,000 on a piece of property valued at $750,000. I wouldn’t want the deal either.

  • “Our Constitution guarantees religious freedom. By necessity, this must also include the right not to believe. It should be obvious that you can be a good citizen, a moral person and a patriotic American and not believe in God”

    It’s astonishing and depressing how many people believe atheists are inherently immoral, that there is no such thing as the separation of church and state in the Constitution, and that freedom from religion is not in the Constitution. The Establishment Clause guarantees the last of course, and with the Free Exercise Clause builds the wall of separation. But they just deny it, no matter how many times you shove the First Amendment in their faces.
    It’s exasperating.

  • It’s the city’s land. They have every right to do with it as they please. However, it was the Scouts who built the building and have maintained it lo these many years. If Philly reimburses the Scouts for all the improvements to the property, then I believe we can call it even.

    Oh, and while we’re busy trying to scrape every molecule of religious reference from life in the United States, let’s not forget to put a bullet in the head of the little geezer that both houses of Congress trot out at the beginning of each session to ask God’s blessing on the proceedings.

    I’m a pretty “live and let live” kind of guy, but when freedom OF religion gets confused with freedom FROM religion, that’s where I draw the line. Our Founding Fathers must be twirling madly in their graves.

  • I’m a pretty live and let live kind of guy too, and I see no problem with erasing god from politics. After all, it’s pretty clear that only the classic christian god is allowed. Why not Ganesh or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? People can believe what they want, but in matters of state—where people of all beliefs (or no ridig belief) all interact—the christian god is simply unnecessary and, in many cases, offensive to some people. It’s like when my Christian relatives visit and we’re all expected to join hands and pray before we eat, despite the fact that several of us at the table are atheists who consider them delusional. For the sake of keeping peace in the family it gets done, but why on earth should people be exposed to such nonsense when they deal with their government? What gives christians the right to impose their beliefs on everybody just because they’re in the majority?

  • Jim @ #6: Please spare us the extremist GOP talking points. Freedom *from* religion does not mean erasing it from existence, it means that religious people are not allowed to force their beliefs on the rest of us. Whether you or anyone else likes it or not, the Constitution says explicitly that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In other words, the government *must* be religiously neutral.

    Yes, the founders would be turning in their graves. Because people like you seem determined to misrepresent what religious freedom actually means.

  • Freedom from religion is what the civil rights era was all about. Unfortunately many of the civil-rights supporters are still religious and have hard time coping with us non-religious folk, and our rights. The Scouts got booted for a good reason. We cannot ignore civil rights just because we happed to like the Scouts.

  • The Boy Scouts have always been a propaganda tool seeking to indoctrinate boys in the poisonous mix of God and Country, in which nationalism is confused with patriotism. This is excellent cover for pedophiles, which the Scout’s founder almost certainly was, and embarrassing revelations within the Scout organization has demonstrated. Homosexuals, gay or not, are not by definition pedophiles, although the behavior of the Scout organization would certainly have you believe that, despite no lack of such pecadillos on their part.

    The stories I have heard from male friends about their scouting experiences, and what little contact I had with the organization when I was younger have led me to conclude that their influence is generally to reinforce establishment, if not overtly right-wing, views with their military-like uniforms and pecking order. Merit badges seemingly represent some sort of meritocracy, but the boys quickly learn that who you are is more important than what you can do. We could do much better with our very young people than expose them to this narrow ethnocentric worldview, and we should.

    Congratulations to Philadelphia for kicking them out.

  • Philadelphia did the right thing by giving them the boot. Subsidizing discrimination has no place in government.

    Top 5 religious affiliations in the U.S.
    1) Christianity
    2) Atheists (technically not a religion)
    3) Jewish
    4) Islam
    5) Buddhism (technically not a religion)

  • “Most of the talk about the Boy Scouts and their discriminatory policies centers on homosexuality. If you’re gay, you can’t be a Scout leader. They’ll even kick out a young man who has been involved for years if he emerges from the closet while in a leadership position.”

    That isn’t totally accurate. The Boy Scout policy also calls for the dismissal of MEMBERS who are “avowed homosexuals” and non-theists. There are many examples of youth members being dismissed from the organization, even while they were not in any type of “leadership position” (that statement is confusing, as in any Scout troop, a good portion of the youth members will hold some sort of “leadership position” – such as Librarian, Scribe, Chaplain Aide, Senior or Assistant Patrol Leader, etc.).

    There are examples of youth members being dismissed profiled at a website I run: http://scoutpride.interstateq.com

  • The Boy Scouts of America as a corporate organization also discriminates against another target. Given that Scouting was not started by, and has never belonged solely to Americans, the recently published row between the BSA and the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) shows the BSA leadership’s conditional beliefs in freedom and democracy. The only condition of the BSA leadership is that any decision regarding member freedoms or arrived at by democratic means will only be honored and respected if that decision is congruent to the beliefs of their insulated oligarchy, who have propped up their mahogany table and chairs so high that they’ve lost touch with the perspectives of a subset of their own paying membership. Of course a progressive opinion will only hold a marginal influence while the regressive views of the Mormon church, much of whose membership is forced and in no way volitional and voluntary, is allowed to certify or veto every move made within America’s iconic youth-serving organization.

    Those who have not yet discovered the BSA’s discrimination against other, more socially equal and progressive Scout organizations around the world, including the Scout Movement’s overall leadership of the WOSM, need only to review the case of the recently-deposed Secretary General Eduardo Missoni. The documents posted on respond to the vapid allegations of the BSA during their successfully staged coup. The situation has reflected poorly on all Americans within the global community of WOSM, because the comparatively wealthy BSA created a perfect storm by refusing to pay their annual dues to WOSM, and organizing further withholdings from other organizations, thereby plunging the entire Scout Movement into a financial crisis. While no one, especially not the World Scout Committee (the executive board of WOSM), believed that the BSA’s case contained one iota of truth, they were forced to dismiss the Secretary General (as per BSA’s primary demand) in order to save the Movement’s service to Scouts worldwide and from legal bankruptcy.

    The Scout Movement was founded on the principles of an ideal democracy, where everyone pays but the developed countries pay proportionately higher dues so that their support can be used to enhance the basic Scouting infrastructure in the poorest areas of the world—countries in regions that implement educational initiatives through Scouting that save lives through safe drinking water, sustainable agriculture, and AIDS prevention programs. It is clear by their recent behavior that BSA officials believe that they are not obligated to belong to the movement that founded their own successes, but rather they now believe the movement should now belong to them.

    What’s worse is that the BSA oligarchy is convinced that it is fighting a worthy war against a terrible enemy, yet all can see by the World Scout Crest badge that all BSA Scouts and leaders are expected to wear on their uniforms that the enemy is only themselves. They are waging a civil war, with the motivation based solely on their own fears raised to the power of their own greed. Through the documents posted online, even lay observers can see the sucker punches landing on a mismatched and wimpy opponent. The BSA leadership feels that its own beliefs require no justification, merely that because they belong to the once-noble American organization and because they “thunk it up”, they have the authority to behave on behalf of the universe.

    We can praise the BSA on one characteristic: the dogmatic consistency of their attitude. We can see that their myopic perspective toward international issues matches their perspective toward domestic issues. We can also see that the BSA as an institution will be dismantled from the outside in—they will destroy their affiliation with Scouting around the world, and then they will fail to learn any lessons and be destroyed by their affiliations within their own country. Saving the BSA begins with a regime change of their own, replacing the post-World-War-II isolationist perspective with the globalized and interdependent views of the 21st century, as is especially found in the contemporary nonprofit youth welfare and development sector.

    Missoni’s Timeline: http://www.eduardomissoni.net/CV/worldscout/WOSMcrisis/crisisindex.html
    Wikipedia Wiki about WOSM Crisis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jergen/WOSM_crisis

  • It saddens me to read the behavior now associated with the BSA, and the vitriol that accompanies it. Even after 40 years, I remember my days in the Scouts as a rewarding time, in which I attained the highest rank, and one in which I learned basic leadership skills that stood me well throughout school and into my career. Earning a merit badge introduced me to the career I’ve held for 35 years. And although the religious ceremonies on Sundays while on camping trips made me uncomfortable, I simply didn’t attend, along with some other boys, and we were not made to feel as outsiders. I was not aware of any gays in my troop, but knowing some of the boys in later years, I am sure there were even if they were not aware of their natures yet. It was a fairly diverse group in all ways; we were all just boys, and the adult leaders helped us achieve rank, experiences and maturity.

    I do hope the insanity that has taken over a large part of the national leadership of the BSA passes out of the mainstream, so the organization can return to what I remember.

  • Why is the right-wing point that the City should pay for the improvements?

    It’s not like the ‘improvements’ were built yesterday.

  • Amazing the misinformation that is always being spread about the Boy Scouts.

    There was a court case that went to the Supreme Court regarding Gay Leadership standards that the BSA has. It was upheld in BSA favor.

    All these simple minded hypocrites who complain endlessly about the discrimination of the BSA when they are doing exactly the same exact thing. They are discriminating against the BSA. Don’t let that slow you down though, acting as if you are holy than thou. Everyone “discriminates”.

    In this case it ties to youth protection and protection for the leaders.

    The bozo above who stated that the BSA doesn’t allow other religions – you are entirely wrong. You can worship the great hamburger for what its worth, the only thing you can be is someone who catagorically denies a higher being. So Agnostics are fine.

    Yet the BSA is attacked because people have this need to include everyone. Everyone except those who do not agree with you, then they are discriminated against. The BSA isn’t a hate organization. Yet they are hated by these people who are open minded. Tell me, who is worse a group that holds to certain standards that is constitutionally protected or the people who hate that organization that they have no clue about?

  • Just curious. Since he’s not gay, could Larry Craig be a scoutmaster?

    At least he’s not a filthy atheist.

    OvertheTop @16
    I was in scouts. I was agnostic.
    At camp I was compelled to go to church. “Agnostic” was not a recognized/approved category of “faith”.

    If things have changed, it was done VERY quietly.

    Before you claim slander, produce some facts. We’ll listen, but we won’t take your say so.

  • The Supreme Court ruled that BSA is a private organization that can discriminate and it logically follows from that ruling that governments must end their subsidies of Boy Scouts to comply with the Civil Rights Act and Equal Protection and Establishment Clauses of the U.S. constitution. So what Philly is doing is actually a result of that Supreme Court ruling, it is not inconsistent with that ruling at all.

    Discriminating against atheists cannot be justified on “youth protection” or “protection for the leaders” grounds. Atheists are no different from any other citizens in terms of constituting a threat to anyone. Agnostics and atheists overlap, basically everyone is an atheist with respect to the gods of other religions and hidden god(s) may be possible even if they are not plausible or believed in. A number of lawsuits against Boy Scouts were initiated by self-described agnostics who are denied membership because they refused to publically assert that god was a fact as required by Boy Scouts.

    Enforcement of government anti-discrimination laws in no way implies that discriminatory organizations are in any way inferior to non-discriminatory organizations, It is all about upholding the principle that government is non-partisan, that government subsidized programs must not exclude anyone because government must treat all citizens equally.

  • You are a US citizen. You have rights.

    You have the right not to join the Boy Scouts of America.Start your own group, charter yourself and make up your own rules that others can complain about and call you names. Get off your high horse, join or don’t join, no one is trying to take control of anyone else, nor are they forcing their opinions or beliefs on anyone else or their organization. Ultimately, you are FREE TO JOIN OR STAY AWAY. don’t complain because they don’t believe what you do, you are guilty of inflicting your opinion on them. Isn’t that what you are complaining about.

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