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June 19, 2002, 10:25 a.m. Hypocrites on Homosexuality The Boy Scouts have had the right idea. By Leslie Carbone

s the hypocrisy of today's cultural elites limitless? Is the Pope Catholic? After years of haranguing the Boy Scouts of America for refusing to place young boys in danger of sexual abuse, the liberal intelligentsia is now condemning the Catholic Church leadership for doing exactly that.

For months, the Catholic Church has come under criticism for continuing to permit pedophilic priests access to young boys. Critics of the church's hierarchy are absolutely right. Its leadership was derelict in its duties to provide a good moral example and to protect children. Responding to the onslaught of criticism, America's bishops met in Dallas last week to iron out a policy for dealing with priests guilty of child molestation. The bishops agreed to remove any priest guilty of a single act of child molestation from ministry, though not from the priesthood. Though the new policy is already provoking criticism from some for not going far enough, it is being hailed by others as the right move and a vast improvement over the result of an earlier meeting of American cardinals with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, which yielded only a set of bland recommendations, including that a priest who becomes "notorious and is guilty of serial, predatory, sexual abuse of minors" be dismissed, while bishops over those merely suspected of molesting children were granted discretion to deal with such situations. This broad discretion is of course part of why the church found itself in crisis in the first place — and why so many children were hurt.

But what if the church had exercised the zero-tolerance policy now demanded in the first place? Would it have dodged the criticism it now endures?

The Boy Scouts of America didn't. The BSA has come under constant fire for its policy of prohibiting homosexuals from serving as scoutmasters. While not all homosexuals are child molesters and not all child molesters are homosexual, there is a strong enough correlation to mean that the BSA's policy is prudent and responsible. Although homosexuals constitute only about two percent of the population, they represent one-third of child molesters. "The Gay Report," the 1979 work of homosexual researchers Jay and Young revealed that 73 percent of homosexuals surveyed admitted to having had sexual relations with boys ages 16 to 19 or younger. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover sees a "substantial, influential, and growing segment of the homosexual community that neither hides nor condemns pedophilia. Rather they argue that pedophilia is an acceptable aspect of sexuality, especially of homosexuality."

It's easy to see why serving as scoutmasters is attractive to homosexual child molesters. Such a post provides easy access to lots of young boys away from their parents, on such excursions as the camping trips that are a staple of scout life. Though the BSA annually bars hundreds of homosexuals from serving as scoutmasters, a nationwide investigation of child molestation in the Boy Scouts found that more than 2,000 boys had reported molestation by adult Scout leaders who slipped by the ban during 1971 to 1991. Lifting the BSA's ban on homosexual scoutmasters would surely only increase this number.

In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decision of the New Jersey supreme court, which had forced the BSA to accept homosexuals as scoutmasters. Attacks on the Scouts continue unabated. The United Way and some corporations, including media giant Knight-Ridder, Inc., and Levi-Strauss, have withdrawn funding from the BSA. The Los Angeles City Council evicted the Scouts from public facilities. Boy Scouts appearing on the dais at the 2000 Democratic National Convention were actually booed by delegates, adults who apparently thought it proper to boo children for belonging to an organization that safeguards them. Even religious institutions are not immune. While Catholic leaders draw fire for allowing what the Scouts forbid, interest groups within at least four other denominations, including United Methodist, Episcopalian, Reform Judaism, and Unitarian, have passed resolutions condemning the Scouts' policy.

Life could soon get even worse for the Boy Scouts. On April 24, the Senate Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions Committee, evidently having learned nothing from the scandal shaking the Catholic Church, okayed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would force employers, including those in education and child care, to hire and retain people precisely because they practice homosexual behavior. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.), the bill's chief sponsor and the committee's chairman, called the bill "a giant step forward" in curbing the discrimination that is an "insidious aspect of American life."

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) has said that he will bring ENDA up for a floor vote before the session ends in October. If ENDA becomes law, it could force the BSA to accept homosexual scoutmasters. Al Gore, vice president when the Supreme Court decision favoring the scouts came down, pledged to end "this kind of discrimination by groups public and private ... . [T]he principle piece of legislation on that, incidentally, is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which I support." Ironically, a religious exemption in the bill, if upheld, would mean that it does not apply to the Catholic Church, which might then become one of the few remaining institutions in America permitted to do what it hasn't — keep homosexuals away from young boys.

Such is the result of public policy based on hypocrisy. There is a better way. Institutions like the Boy Scouts of America that strive to protect children should not be condemned. They should be honored — and upheld as an example to other institutions that lack their moral fortitude.

— Leslie Carbone, former director of family tax policy at Family Research Council, is the author of Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform (forthcoming).