spazeboy

The Price of Discrimination

Via the Friendly Atheist I learned about Philadelphia’s decision to charge a fair-market rent on the Boy Scouts’ headquarters in town:

Cradle of Liberty [Boy Scouts] officials have said they could not renounce the scouts’ long-established policy of not opening membership to atheists or openly gay people without running afoul of their charter with the scouts’ National Council.

City officials have said they could not legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a dollar a year to a private organization that discriminates.

The land belongs to the City of Philadelphia but has been leased since 1928 for that token sum to the scouts, who built the landmark Beaux Arts building.

That lease came into question only after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2000 in a New Jersey case involving an openly gay scout who was barred from serving as troop leader.

The high court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale ruled, 5-4, that the scouts, as a private organization, have a right of “expressive association” under the First Amendment to set their own membership rules.

The scouts have long required members to swear an oath of duty to God, and their rules prohibit membership by anyone who is openly homosexual. For that reason, scouting officials initially greeted the Supreme Court’s ruling as a victory.

That mood quickly evaporated, however, as local government officials around the nation began reexamining long-standing preferential relationships with scouts.

Unlike the scouts, public officials are also bound by a line of Supreme Court opinions barring taxpayer support of any group that discriminates.

It’s going to cost the Boy Scouts an additional $199,999/yr to continue excluding gays and atheists from participating in their organization. Is it really worth all that?

I don’t think the Boy Scouts are going to suddenly see the light here, and begin to allow scouts of all beliefs (or lack thereof) and sexual identities. After all, if the scouts are discriminating on the basis of divine principle, so what’s $199,999 to them?

And realistically, how many atheists or homosexuals are eager to join the scouts? And how many of said atheists or homosexuals do you think aren’t already in the scouts, but just keeping their personal business to themselves? I’m not saying that they should have to do so, but I am saying that it’s kind of silly to believe that there are absolutely NO atheists and NO homosexuals among the boy scouts just because the organization officially prohibits them. It’s not like these factors manifest themselves in primordial physical traits.

So if the Boy Scouts of America was to say, not discriminate on the basis of religion (or lack thereof) and sexuality — something that it cannot do with 100% efficacy anyway — it could save itself nearly $200,000 and teach young men about the virtues of tolerance and acceptance.