City Solicitor Romulo Diaz -- an open homosexual, according to media reports -- is spearheading the campaign against the Scouts. Officials defend the outrageously high rent hike with typical PC blather. “You cannot be in a city-owned facility being subsidized by the taxpayers,” Councilman Darrell Clarke told The New York Times, “and not have language in your lease that talks about nondiscrimination.” Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court already ruled several years ago that the Boy Scouts are a private organization entitled to set its own membership policies. Clarke and Diaz apparently answer to a different authority.
Perhaps a bigger question is, who’s next? According to Jeff Jubelirer, a spokesman with the Philadelphia Scouts, dozens of other groups could be targeted next. Will, say, the tax-exempt status of some be questioned? Take the Catholic Church, which doesn’t allow women ministers. How would it fare under an extreme PC regime? As Jubelirer says, “How are [city officials] going to justify differentiation in treatment? There are wonderful arts organizations, museums, a public radio station. They’re on that list.”
The hypocrisy at work here is astonishing. How often do radical liberals lecture us about the First Amendment, insisting that it’s meant to protect unpopular points of view from censorship, only to turn around and find some sneaky way to try and muzzle an upstanding group like the Boy Scouts for daring to offend their leftist orthodoxy?
Besides, the Scouts happen to have a logical reason for their policy. “The Scouts bar openly homosexual Scoutmasters and members for moral reasons and for the sake of protecting young boys from possible harm, not because they are motivated by bigotry or prejudice,” Robert Knight says. Their opponents act “as if the Scouts have no rational reason for wanting to determine whether prospective leaders or members are attracted sexually to males.”
Fortunately, the city’s disgraceful campaign against the Scouts hasn’t gone unnoticed by the public. Indeed, writes Bob Unruh, “Citizens outraged by the city's ultimatum crashed the e-mail system of the Philadelphia mayor's office.” But, he also notes, Philadelphia isn’t alone: “City officials in San Francisco and Boston have made similar decisions to displace the Scouts because of the group’s behavior code.”
So whose “behavior code” makes more sense? The Boy Scouts, who make their communities better places to live, as they turn boys into responsible young men? Or PC government officials determined to push a warped social agenda on the rest of us? If you side with the Scouts, learn more and speak up -- responsibly but firmly. Our Scouts deserve nothing less.