In for the long haul - gays try to force Boy Scouts of America to accept them as members

It may be years before pressure on the Boy Scouts leads to an end of its antigay policy

Since the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in June to uphold the Boy Scouts of America's right to bar gay men from entering or holding leadership positions in its ranks, gay activists have pursued a grassroots ground war against the group. Hoping to sap public support for the BSA by stigmatizing its power to discriminate, opponents of the Scouts' policy have targeted schools and charitable groups to pressure them to live up to their own nondiscrimination policies and sever ties with the Scouts.

"This policy, which is in direct conflict with the values the Boy Scouts of America teaches, sends a message to gay youth that they are inherently immoral and not worthy to be members of the Boy Scouts of America," says Mark Noel, a former scoutmaster in Hanover, N.H. The policy, he adds, "also sends a message to straight youth that it is not only acceptable but also morally correct to discriminate."

Yet activists face obstacles in their campaign to force the BSA to change its policy. Efforts to deny the Scouts public funding and school meeting space have succeeded in only a few jurisdictions, and the drive to shunt United Way donations away from Scout troops has met mixed results. The organization itself has adamantly refused to bow to any pressures. Most of all, some local activists have foundered in the face of charges that their determination to end antigay bias in the Scouts will stunt needed learning and recreation opportunities for poor and urban boys.

Noel, whom the Scouts formally ousted in July after he wrote a coming-out editorial in a local newspaper, is a former Eagle scout, as is James Dale, who brought the lawsuit that ended up before the high court. Noel's newly formed Northern New England Coalition for Inclusive Scouting is just one of the local, regional, and national activist groups formed by ousted scout leaders. In the wake of the June 28 ruling, this network of activists has drawn support from straight former scouts as well as parents and their boys. Some highlights of their recent efforts:

* To protest the ban on gays, many Eagle scouts have relinquished their cherished medals signifying the group's highest honor, achieved by just one in 25 scouts. "I was not taught by scoutmasters of former years, even in Oklahoma in the '40s, that morality and intolerance could be joined," the Rev. Gene Huff, a 72-year-old Presbyterian minister in San Francisco, wrote the Scouts. Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the Irving, Tex.-based BSA, said "quite a few" such medals had been returned, according to Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

* Schools in Broward County, Fla., the nation's fifth-largest district, now are looking to vote on banning recruitment or meeting by Scout troops in its facilities. The Fort Lauderdale city commission also voted to sever its ties to troops. On October 10 the Minneapolis school board voted unanimously to end its relationship with the Scouts.

* Boy Scout councils in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Minnesota have announced lost revenue from declining public donations following the Supreme Court ruling.

* California state judge James Lambden, a Republican appointee to the bench who has been involved with the Scouts for 35 years, has quit as an assistant scoutmaster. As the public controversy escalates over staying active in a discriminatory charity, Lambden calls the decision to remain "ethically questionable for judges everywhere."

* Minnesota-based Medtronic Inc.'s corporate foundation announced September 27 that it has prohibited the Scouts from receiving money from its $1 million United Way gift. A day earlier, the Duluth United Way had discontinued its contribution to the Scouts.

So far, these successes have had little impact on the BSA and have generated a backlash from conservatives. Antigay groups, eager to blunt further progress by gay activists, are mobilizing to bolster the Scouts. Focus on the Family, whose October Citizen magazine praises BSA resistance to the defunding drive, has featured Fort Lauderdale mayor Jim Naugle on its radio network to lambaste the new city policy. And Tempe, Ariz., mayor Neil Giuliano, an openly gay Republican who won reelection in March with 70% of the vote, now faces a recall bid after attempting to prevent the Scouts from being eligible for United Way funding through solicitation of city employees, then changing his mind to allow the donations.

"People are absolutely outraged that they would consider attacking the Boy Scouts," says Janet Folger, a Florida activist with the Center for Reclaiming America, a conservative group. Folger vows that members of the Fort Lauderdale city commission, which canceled a grant to the Scouts, would feel the backlash at the ballot box. "This time they've gone too far, and it's going to hurt them," she says. "We're going to be looking to remedy this assault through the electoral process."

In a minor blow to gay activists, New York City-based Chase Manhattan Corp. in opted to continue a review of BSA policy before agreeing to any cutoff of funds. "At the end of the day, we do not want to withdraw funding from those programs, because doing so would be harmful to thousands of children who benefit significantly from them," the bank giant announced.

One countertactic of some activists, playing out in both Boston and Philadelphia, is to urge local United Ways to redirect funding to the Scouts' Learning for Life programs, which operate under boards separate from the BSA. However, other activists maintain that the connection to the Scouts taints that program, which provides character-based education for urban schoolchildren as well.

Activists versed in the history of gay resistance to discrimination by private organizations say that such protests may make some headway, but real reform will come only in the long term.

"The amount of work we put in during the '70s paid off 20 years later," says Cynthia Secor, now an administrator at the University of Denver. One generation ago, Secor was part of a work group that attempted to get developers of Girl Scout programs in Pennsylvania to include more feminist themes, such as reproductive rights and "lifestyle" diversity.

That effort "went down in flames," says Secor, when the Catholic Church announced opposition to any mention of abortion and gays. Though she was a longtime Girl Scout leader whose mother and aunt were scouting activists, Secor left scouting after the dispute. She notes that two decades later, the Girl Scouts organization has no policy barring lesbians from participation.

But Secor also frames a key dilemma facing gay activists, whose ability to forge change runs smack up against the closet door in which Boy Scout leaders are forced to dwell. "My sense of how you change private organizations is to love them enough to stay in them," she says. Former scouts, activists, and allies will achieve change in the Boy Scouts, she adds, but only by showing "incredible patience."

Find more on the Boy Scouts controversy and links to related Internet sites at www.advocate.com

Johnson is an editor at Action magazine in Washington, D.C., and a contributor to In These Times.

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