PACKET EDITORIAL, Nov. 28
By: Packet Editorial
When two members of the Princeton Borough Council took action last week to prevent a local Boy Scout troop from using a couple of borough-owned parking spaces to sell Christmas trees this year, our initial reaction was probably the same as most of our readers’: Why take it out on the kids?
Councilmen Ryan Stark Lilienthal and Roger Martindell aren’t alone in their opposition to the Boy Scouts of America’s policy of discrimination against homosexuals. Many of us find the Scouts’ intolerant attitude at odds with the organization’s professed allegiance to American values, and we were sorely disappointed when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Scouts’ right to practice their narrow-minded policy.
But it’s one thing to decry the prejudices of a national organization. It’s quite another to punish that organization’s innocent members – especially when they are otherwise warm-hearted, high-minded youngsters who want nothing more than to perform a popular community service. This is, after all, the Boy Scouts we’re talking about here; they do good deeds.
That, as we say, was our initial reaction. And, given that three of the six Borough Council members were absent when the vote was taken, it wouldn’t surprise us if the full council, hearing much the same sentiment from the community over the holiday weekend, might wish to revisit this issue.
(In practical terms, what we’re talking about here is a request by Boy Scout Troop 43 for permission to place bags over two meters on Chambers Street so that customers can pick up their Christmas trees without having to pay for a few minutes’ parking – hardly the stuff of weighty public policy consequence.)
But there is, on further consideration, something to be said for Mr. Lilienthal and Mr. Martindell’s tactic. To dismiss it out of hand as an empty, symbolic exercise aimed at the wrong target would be easy but shortsighted, in much the same way that divesting from companies doing business with the apartheid government in South Africa was regarded by some as a well-intentioned but meaningless protest, or that boycotting grapes picked by non-union laborers in California was criticized as a vainglorious and ineffectual exercise. In the end, these actions did more than make people feel good; they actually contributed to desired changes in policy.
Of course, we’re not suggesting that denying a troop in Princeton two free parking spaces to sell Christmas trees is going to bring the Boy Scouts of America to its knees – but how else does a community register its opposition to an organization whose stated principles its residents find abhorrent? How else do people who are offended by the Scouts’ discrimination mount a meaningful protest against it? If the nation’s highest court won’t bring an end to this form of bigotry, perhaps some acts of conscience by the citizens of progressive communities will.
Does this hurt the kids? Sure it does. Is that fair? No, it isn’t. But neither is it fair that the Boy Scouts of America demands of its members adherence to a standard of conduct that many people – including, we believe, a majority of Princetonians – find objectionable. It is not altogether unreasonable to put the organization on notice that, if it persists in clinging to this offensive policy, it may suffer some consequences.
So, this issue may not be the open-and-shut case we initially thought it was. And, in the end, it appears the local troop will go ahead and sell its Christmas trees whether or not the Borough Council grants it the two free parking spots, thus reducing the whole matter to a tempest in a teapot. But it still has the aroma of a good, robust public policy debate – and it’s one in which we would like our readers to participate. Princeton resident Douglas Mackie expresses his view in a letter to the editor on this page; another reader, Barbara Salbego, has weighed in at our Web site, www.princetonpacket.com. We would welcome more comment on the issue. Unless we’re mistaken, we suspect that members of the Borough Council would, too.