Boy Scouts evicted over Anti-Gay Bigotry

Negotiations have ended and come June 1, 2008 – the Boy Scouts will have to have vacated Beaux Art Building.

For three years the Philadelphia council of the Boy Scouts of America held its ground. It resisted the city’s request to change its discriminatory policy toward gay people despite threats that if it did not do so, the city would evict the group from a municipal building where the Scouts have resided practically rent free since 1928.

Hailed as the birthplace of the Boy Scouts, the Beaux Arts building is the seat of the seventh-largest chapter of the organization and the first of the more than 300 council service centers built by the Scouts around the country over the past century.

But over the years the fight between the city and the Scouts was about more than this grandiose structure in Center City.

Municipal officials said the clash stemmed from a duty to defend civil rights and an obligation to abide by a local law that bars taxpayer support for any group that discriminates. Boy Scout officials said it was about preserving their culture, protecting the right of private organizations to remain exclusive and defending traditions like requiring members to swear an oath of duty to God and prohibiting membership by anyone who is openly homosexual.

This week the Boy Scouts made their last stand and lost.

I, for one, say good riddance. Any group that discriminates against any member of the American public for any reason should not receive official public support. It really is that simple. The scout leaders, being the paragons of responsibility they are, are blaming the city.

“With an epidemic of gun violence taking the lives of children almost daily in this city, it’s ironic that this administration chose to destroy programming that services thousands of children in the city,” Mr. Jubelirer said. [emphasis added]

Yes, it’s the city’s fault that the Boy Scout leaders chose to defend bigoted practices knowing full well that a defeat would impact their ability to help children, well at least children who are heterosexual theists. I think this irritates me most of all. They could at least have the courage of their convictions.