July 10, 2000
Court sides with Boy Scouts
___By Kenny Byrd
___Associated Baptist Press
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--The Boy Scouts of America have a constitutional right to bar homosexuals from being troop leaders, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.
___The 5-4 decision reversed a unanimous decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court that a man's membership in the Boy Scouts was unlawfully revoked solely because he is a homosexual.
___New Jersey has a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in places of public accommodation.
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___In an opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, however, the court ruled that forcing the Boy Scouts to accept an undesired member violated the organization's First Amendment rights to free expression and association.
___"Such forced membership is unconstitutional if the person's presence affects in a significant way the group's ability to advocate public or private viewpoints," Rehnquist said in the opinion also joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
___The majority gave deference to the Scouts' position that "homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the values embodied in the Scout Oath and Law, particularly those represented by the terms 'morally straight' and 'clean,' and that the organization does not want to promote homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior."
___In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said the Boy Scouts neither engage in "expressive association" nor assert homosexuality is wrong.
___"It is plain as the light of day that neither one of these principles--'morally straight' and 'clean'--says the slightest thing about homosexuality," Stevens said in his opinion, joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
___Souter also filed a separate dissenting opinion.
___Stevens said it was difficult to believe that the Boy Scouts shared the view of religious groups against homosexuality when "insofar as religious matters are concerned, (the Boy Scouts') bylaws state that it is absolutely non-sectarian in its attitude toward ... religious training."
___Stevens added the Boy Scouts "are surely aware that some religious groups do not teach that homosexuality is wrong."
___James Dale joined the Boy Scouts at age 8 and eventually became an Eagle Scout. He later gained adult membership to the Boy Scouts and served as an assistant scoutmaster for 16 months.
___After he was identified in a news article as the co-president of the Rutgers University Lesbian/Gay Alliance, he received a letter from a local Boy Scouts official revoking his membership.
___The official said the standards for leadership by the group forbade membership to homosexuals.
___After an appeal to Boy Scouts' officials to reverse their decision, Dale filed suit against the federally chartered corporation.
___A trial court rejected Dale's charge the Boy Scouts had violated the New Jersey law, but a state appeals court reversed the decision.
___ The New Jersey Supreme Court also ruled in favor of Dale. But in its final ruling of the term, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling.
___"We are not, as we must not be, guided by our views of whether the Boy Scout's teachings with respect to homosexual conduct are right or wrong," Rehnquist ruled.
___But he said the "public or judicial disapproval of a tenet of an organization's expression does not justify the state's effort to compel the organization to accept members where such acceptance would derogate from the organization's expressive message."
___Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land said in a statement that the burden the New Jersey Supreme Court sought to place on the Boy Scouts could just as easily be placed on churches and other religious organizations.
___Land said the upcoming presidential election is important because the next president will likely nominate at least two Supreme Court justices.
___The fact that four justices would dissent in the Boy Scout case, Land said, should "give every American pause and cause them to renew their scrutiny of presidential candidates."
___"If the Supreme Court had ruled the other way, it could have forced the NAACP to accept a Ku Klux Klan member, the B'Nai Brith to accept Catholics, and the Knights of Columbus to accept Jews as members and leaders," added Jan LaRue, senior director of Legal Studies for Family Research Council.
___ The Cato Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research foundation that filed a legal brief in the case in support of the Boy Scouts, said the decision was "favorable," but said the court "has a long way to go still before it secures true freedom of association."
___ "In narrowing the freedom of association to the freedom of expressive association, the Court left untouched its earlier decision holding that private organizations formed along less 'expressive' lines--like the Jaycees--cannot exclude women or others who might wish to join," said Roger Pilon, vice president for legal studies at the institute.
___Shelvia Dancy of Religion News Service contributed to this article.
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