Monmouth Scout Council relieved
to put gay Scout case behind it
Monmouth Council
unconcerned about
backlash over victory
MMonmouth County Boy Scout leaders are unconcerned about any backlash following their victory last week over gay Scout leaders.
"No, we’re not really concerned with any backlash," said James Kay, executive director of the Monmouth Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
"We’re delighted with the decision, and we are equally delighted in putting it behind us. Ten years is long enough."
In a 5-4 ruling last week in the case of Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts can exclude homosexual members as the group is deemed a private organization.
Dale, formerly of Middletown, who was represented by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York, expressed disappointment.
"I’ve spent nearly half of my life in Scouting so obviously this decision is disappointing," said Dale, 29, who now resides in New York. "But if I learned anything during my years as a Scout, it was to believe that justice will prevail. America realizes that discrimination is wrong, even if the Boy Scouts don’t know that yet."
Kay ousted Dale as leader of a Matawan troop in July 1990 after Scout officials learned he was gay through an article in The Star-Ledger. The article named him as co-president of a homosexual organization at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.
Last week’s ruling overturns an August 1999 decision by the New Jersey State Supreme Court which ruled that the Boy Scouts’ ban on homosexual troop leaders violated a state ban on discrimination in public accommodations.
"The forced inclusion of an unwanted person in a group infringes the group’s freedom of expressive association if the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group’s ability to advocate public or private viewpoints," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in the majority decision.
"This is a great victory for all Americans," said New York attorney George Davidson, who represented the Boy Scouts of America. "The decision for freedom of expressive association sets a precedent for many years to come. This will be important in many aspects of our society, that government can’t interfere with private missions and memberships."
"This is a Pyrrhic victory for the BSA [Boy Scouts of America] leadership," commented Evan Wolfson, who argued the case for Dale. "They have won for themselves the dubious right to be bigoted and exclusionary. They have convinced the highest court in the land, and have shown the rest of the country, that they stand for discrimination."
The case has taken on national media attention for the issues of freedom of expression and homosexuality, as well as the classification of an organization as either public or private.
According to the BSA, which was chartered by Congress in 1916, "An avowed homosexual is not a role model for the values espoused in the Scout Oath and Law."
BSA officials further added, "Boy Scouting makes no effort to discover the sexual orientation of any person. Scouting’s message is compromised when prospective leaders present themselves as role models inconsistent with Boy Scouting’s understanding of the Scout Oath and Law."
The BSA defended its membership standards by stating, "As a private organization, [the BSA] must have the right to establish its own standards of membership if it is to continue to instill the values of Scout Oath and Law in boys. Thanks to our legal victories, our standards of membership have been sustained."
According to Lambda, Dale earned more than 30 merit badges and rose to the rank of Eagle Scout. In 1989 he was inducted into the prestigious Order of the Arrow, a Scouting honor society.
Recently, Dale was grand marshal of the annual gay pride parade, held in New York City.