Re: A Scout's Duty t...
Rick Busdiecker (rfb@LEHMAN.COM)
Mon, 11 Jul 1994 13:45:13 -0400
From: JMillerJr@aol.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 94 12:21:45 EDT
Failing to teach the difference sounds to me like saying that the
Constitutional right to free association is an evil thing in and
of itself.
In case you think that I feel that way, I'd like to assure you that I
do not. Much as I dislike the idea of groups such as the Ku Klux
Klan, the American Nazi Party, etc., I think that it is important that
their right to exist be preserved. Pretending that you can disallow
such groups is silly anyway. It does bother me, however, that BSA
chooses to identify with such groups in the manner in which it rejects
more open membership.
Just because I am tolerant of the existance of a given part of
society and would do nothing to cause harm to came to them doesn't
automatically mean that I would invite them into my home, do
business with them, or invite them to join my personal friends at
some event.
For what it's worth, if you are acting as a business, your legal
options in choosing to discriminate are much more limited than if you
are acting as a private organization. BSA has successfully (and
correctly IMO) defended the position that it is a private
organization.
The sorts of discrimination that BSA is choosing strike me as nonsense
and I'm very glad that there are other Scouting organizations which
have rejected such descrimination. With atheism, BSA is choosing to
reject particular belief systems, i. e. religions, as unacceptable.
While I think that it's perfectly legal -- and that it should be legal
-- I think that it's entirely inappropriate for a Scouting
organization. As to BSA's homophobic discrimination, I find nothing
at all to morally distinguish it from BSA's past racial
discrimination. *If* BSA were to claim a particular religion, that
might not be true, but anti-gay arguments always come down to appeals
to particular religions, statements of ignorance, or outright nonsense
like ``Being gay is bad because it's disgusting.''
Part of why I want to see BSA change is that in the past few years,
BSA has failed to live up to ideals which I learned, in part, through
BSA.
Rick
Terry Howerton Sakima Group, Inc. SCOUTER Magazine Kansas City |
