Committee discusses Boy Scouts of America
Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, February 27, 2001
LOUISVILLE – A brief discussion of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Boy Scouts of America’s ban against gay members was held by the Congregational Ministries Division Committee at its recent meeting.
An analysis of the decision Boy Scouts of America v. Dale was presented by Eric Graninger, general counsel to the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Lynn E. Shurley Jr., chair of the committee said that questions about the issue arose at the end of its November 2000 meeting after the committee renewed its covenant relationship with the National Association of Presbyterian Scouters. He said since the committee already had passed the covenant, it could not do anything at the time.
The committee did vote to “include in the February agenda a time to discuss how recent court rulings concerning the Boy Scouts of America might deny Presbyterians full participation in the organization.”
Shurley said the legal department was asked to prepare the analysis so the committee could “pursue this when the covenant comes back up.”
Graninger’s analysis said that the 5-4 decision of the court held that applying New Jersey’s public accommodations law to require the Boy Scouts to admit James Dale, a gay activist, violates the Boy Scouts’ First Amendment right of expressive association.
The decision found that the Boy Scouts had set out a position of condemning homosexual conduct. The Boy Scout oath to be “morally straight” and the Scout law to be “clean” were inconsistent with homosexual conduct.
Secondly, the court found that, as a gay activist, Dale’s presence as an assistant scoutmaster would burden the Scouts’ desire not to promote homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior.
Graninger said the court’s dissenting opinion did not accept the Scouts’ assertion that “morally straight” and “clean’ were the Scouts’ proscription against homosexuality.
“We are not bound by what the government says one way or the other,” Graninger said. He said that in 1992 an overture and a commissioner’s resolution concerning the Boy Scouts came before the General Assembly.
The overture asked the Assembly to uphold the right of the Boy Scouts of America to set their own rules.
The commissioner’s resolution quoted from a 1978 assembly statement that said Christian communities should not engage in persecution of homosexuals and asked congregations to urge the Boy Scouts to cease this “discrimination.”
The assembly, he said, “declined to adopt either of those.”
The committee took no action on the issue.