BY DAN
KENNEDY
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
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Friday, June 13, 2003
Don't ask, don't tell, don't
live your life, just go away. Last month I wrote about a
heartening decision by Philadelphia scout executives to adopt a
nondiscrimination policy to protect gay
Boy Scouts and scout leaders.
Well, so much for that. Today's
Boston Globe carries a story from the Philadelphia
Inquirer reporting that the Cradle of Liberty Council had
ousted
an 18-year-old scout for
publicly coming out in the course of protesting against the national
Boy Scouts of America's discriminatory stance. Reporter Linda Harris
writes:
"He [scout -- uh,
former scout -- Gregory Lattera] decided to hold a
press conference to come out as a member of the gay community and
also a potential employee and past employee of the Boy Scouts,"
said [council leader William] Dwyer, who signed the letter
to Lattera. "Our staff knew he was gay and never made a big deal
about it. He decided to make a big deal about it. The don't ask,
don't tell policy is pretty clear."
The local antidiscrimination
policy approved in May, however, has no mention of don't ask,
don't tell.
Harris's suspicions concerning
"don't ask, don't tell" turn out to be well-founded. Because the news
in today's Inquirer is quite a bit worse: the Cradle of
Liberty Council has reversed
its antidiscrimination policy
after the national office, in Irving, Texas, threatened to revoke its
charter.
This is disturbing, of course, but
it's also puzzling. Surely council executives knew they were going to
have a fight on their hands when they decided to break with national.
If they were prepared to stop discriminating, then presumably they
were prepared to go it alone and set up some sort of alternative to
the national BSA.
As a Boy Scout volunteer and the
father of a scout, I was watching with great interest. I suspect that
plenty of councils -- perhaps even Boston's Minuteman Council, which
announced its own "don't ask, don't tell" policy last year -- would
have been prepared to join them.
According to the Inquirer,
the new policy reads: "Applications for leadership and membership do
not inquire into sexual orientation. However, an individual who
declares himself to be a homosexual would not be permitted to join
Scouting."
Here is the
BSA's press release on the
Philadelphia story. And here is the Cradle
of Liberty Council's position
statement.
What's also disheartening is that
the Philadelphia executives are apparently gutless as well. Note that
point two of the council's statement says:
This non-discrimination
disclosure was directed to the use of United Way funds in the
Learning for Life program and was not, and was not intended to be,
an indication of any desire by the board to depart from the
National Council policies nor should it be construed as any
indication that Cradle of Liberty Council will fail to uphold any
policies of the Boy Scouts of America.
Yet here's what council
president David Lipson told
the Inquirer several weeks ago: "We disagree with the national
stance, and we're not comfortable with the stated national policy.
That's why we're working on a solution that works for everyone." He
added: "We'd like to move the discussion to standards for sexual
conduct rather than sexual orientation." (By the way, the
Inquirer calls Lipson the council's "board chairman," but the
BSA says he is the "president." I will assume that the BSA can at
least get that much right.)
Do Lipson's remarks sound like it
was all a misunderstanding, as the council's statement suggests? Of
course not. It's clear that the council was prepared to stop
discriminating -- period. Now it's backed off, and it's hung Lipson
out to dry -- as seen in this statement from Irving: "Cradle of
Liberty Council President David Lipson has expressed disagreement
with the BSA's membership policies, as is his right."
Yeah, that's right. It was just one
crazy liberal. Now we can all get back to normal.
posted at 8:44 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
