Scout’s Honor

FOR more than eighty years, the Boy Scouts of America have sent young boys on arduous, fortnight-long hikes; taught them to survive alone in the wilderness; and guided them through countless other physical and mental challenges that have helped transform them into mature, responsible men. But now the organization faces a challenge greater than all of these: Can it survive the 1990s?

Recently, a New Jersey appellate court forced the Boy Scouts to give a scoutmaster post to James Dale, a gay activist and editor at POZ, a magazine for HIV-positive people. The divided bench overturned an old Scout policy of not allowing “avowed homosexuals” to serve as scoutmasters. What is particularly shocking about the opinion is its unabashed political expression. The court found that the Boy Scouts cannot discriminate against anyone, on any basis, because the organization is a “public accommodation,” like restaurants and parks. Actually, the judges admitted that it wasn’t much like a public accommodation as defined by the law, but they held that such limited definitions “would frustrate our goal of eradicating The cancer of discrimination’ in New Jersey.”

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E. V. Kontorovich

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FOR more than eighty years, the Boy Scouts of America have sent young boys on arduous, fortnight-long hikes; taught them to survive alone in the wilderness; and guided them through countless other physical and mental challenges that have helped transform them into mature, responsible men. But now the organization faces a challenge greater than all of these: Can it survive the 1990s?

Recently, a New Jersey appellate court forced the Boy Scouts to give a scoutmaster post to James Dale, a gay activist and editor at POZ, a magazine for HIV-positive people. The divided bench overturned an old Scout policy of not allowing “avowed homosexuals” to serve as scoutmasters. What is particularly shocking about the opinion is its unabashed political expression. The court found that the Boy Scouts cannot discriminate against anyone, on any basis, because the organization is a “public accommodation,” like restaurants and parks. Actually, the judges admitted that it wasn’t much like a public accommodation as defined by the law, but they held that such limited definitions “would frustrate our goal of eradicating The cancer of discrimination’ in New Jersey.”