(Time)
It's one thing to say, as most Americans have for years now,
that people shouldn't be fired from their jobs just because they
are gay. But what if that job is to take care of your son on a
Boy Scouts' camping trip? He may need comforting after a
nightmare, or a pat on the back when he skins his knee. You may
know rationally that gays are no more likely to molest children
than are heterosexuals. And you may know that virtually all
psychiatrists have agreed for years that kids can't be "turned"
gay. But your gut may say something else, something biased.
Although an uneasy consensus is forming in favor of gay
equality, the toughest test is what that equality will mean for
our kids. This week the U.S. Supreme Court will take that test
when it hears oral arguments in the case of Boy Scouts of
America v. James Dale. The ruling, expected by summer, should
settle the question of whether the Boy Scouts have to admit
openly gay men and boys.
The Scouts have fought gays several times before, going back to
the '70s, and always won. But this is the first such case to
reach the high court, and it comes after a unanimous lower-court
ruling against the Scouts. If the gay activists pushing Dale's
case win, they will have cracked one of America's most
traditional fraternities, a group that receives strong support
from conservatives. If the Scouts win, they will help activists
on the right reinforce a crumbling heteros-only wall around key
social institutions (marriage being the most fraught).
The case will also help decide how much legislators can advance
gay equality. Eleven states have laws barring employers from
firing workers for being gay, and at least eight more have
considered such legislation this year. The Boy Scouts contend
that hiring openly gay leaders would interfere with the Scouts'
First Amendment right to express the view that homosexuality is
wrong and would violate their First Amendment freedom to
associate, or not, with whomever they please. They also warn
that if they lose, all organizations that serve a specific
group--they point to the N.A.A.C.P--would have to become
all-inclusive.
Gay-activist attorneys say the presence of a few gays wouldn't
keep Scout officials from maintaining anti-gay views, since the
vast majority of scouting activities never involve discussions
of sexuality or politics. They say the issue isn't so much a
group's right to exclusivity--no one is arguing that the Ku Klux
Klan must admit Jews--as it is whether a group like the Boy
Scouts, which generally welcomes every boy, can claim that being
anti-gay is part of its core values. (As a practical matter, the
N.A.A.C.P isn't worried: it has filed a brief against the
Scouts.)
But even if most scouts and their parents don't discuss
homosexuality, some care deeply about it. Opponents of gay
equality--not just Scout officials but also Fundamentalist
Christian landlords who don't want gays to move in, and
conservative charitable groups that don't want to serve
gays--are increasingly using the First Amendment as a shield. At
the heart of these conflicts is this question: If all Americans
must eventually associate with gay people, even in a close-knit
setting like a Scout troop, how will some continue to express
their contrary moral views about gays?
James Dale, 29, walks into Florent, a hip French eatery near a
predominantly gay neighborhood in Manhattan. "Hi, Jaaaaames,"
coos Bruce, the maitre d', as he leans over in his black leather
pants to kiss Dale, who has become something of a gay celebrity
because of his case. Later, as Dale slices into his medium-rare
tuna steak and sips a glass of Chardonnay, he seems a world away
from S'mores over a campfire.
But Dale used to love all that stuff back in Middletown, N.J.,
where he grew up and, at age 8, entered Pack 142 of the Cub
Scouts. Then known as James Dick--he understandably had the name
changed--he became a model scout, earning 30 merit badges as
well as the coveted eagle scout rank. He was on a first-name
basis with the older men who ran scouting locally, and he gladly
gave speeches to civic groups extolling pinewood derbies and
asking for donations. According to the rules, scouts stop being
scouts at 18, but Dale quickly became an assistant scoutmaster.
Then he went to college at Rutgers, and it changed him. Dale,
who had attended a military high school and voted for George
Bush three months after his 18th birthday, got involved with
left-wing campus groups, according to acquaintances. He became a
vegetarian and wore combat boots. After he came out of the
closet during his sophomore year, he was elected co-president of
the campus gay group.
The men from the Monmouth County Boy Scout Council might never
have known, since Dale didn't have much contact with them from
college. But on July 8, 1990, the Newark daily newspaper ran an
earnest article about the plight of "homosexual teenagers," of
whom Dale was still one. He had spoken at a conference on why
gay teens commit suicide at high rates, and his picture
appeared, showing him gesticulating next to a lesbian fellow
student.
Yikes! thought the Scout councilmen, who revoked his Scout
membership. When Dale asked for an explanation, they said the
Boy Scouts of America "specifically forbid membership to
homosexuals." Angry and sad--Dale had hoped to be a scoutmaster
after college--he brought his case to the main gay legal
organization, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which
sued. Then in 1991 Dale gained solid legal footing when the New
Jersey legislature, in an unrelated move, added gays to the
state's Law Against Discrimination.
Today the crux of the Scouts' case against Dale is that he is a
"gay-rights activist" who won't be able to "communicate
scouting's moral values." In fact, it's difficult to imagine
Dale sleeping in a tent at all these days, much less inveighing
against gays around a campfire. Last summer, before his lawyers
made him stop talking to reporters on the record, Dale joked
with one that he was happy not to have to wear the uniform, "a
cotton-poly blend." He lives in lower Manhattan and works as ad
director of POZ, a magazine about AIDS. He has dabbled in
modeling and appeared in January 1999 among the "OUT 100," a
list of influential people compiled by a gay magazine.
But if it is hard to imagine Dale's spreading the word that gay
is bad, his attorney, Evan Wolfson, says the Boy Scouts rarely
convey that message themselves. He says the Scouts have never
taken a position on homosexuality outside a court case. "The
anti-gay view is never communicated to any member," Wolfson
says. "The freedom of association turns on what brings members
together. And scouting is not about bigotry." (Interestingly,
the Girl Scouts have an antidiscrimination policy that is
understood to forbid bias against lesbians--though Girl Scout
leaders aren't supposed to display their sexuality in any way.)
Boy Scouts attorney George Davidson protests that their anti-gay
position is "hardly under a rock," but he admits that if you
check out SCOUTING.ORG, read the Boy Scout Handbook or go with
your son to a troop meeting, you'll hear nothing about gays. He
also acknowledges that, perversely, if they were more stridently
anti-gay--if they were the Boy Scouts of the K.K.K.--they would
have a clearer First Amendment claim that admitting gays would
destroy everything they stand for. "Look, if this were a
business, the Boy Scouts would simply put a few lines [of
anti-gay rhetoric] in a corporate handbook and be done with it,"
says Davidson, who usually defends major businesses.
So why not? Because the Boy Scouts are torn between competing
sides in the culture wars. One faction is composed of such
sponsoring institutions as schools and fire departments--more
and more of which have policies that prohibit discrimination
against gays. Also part of this faction are liberal religious
groups that have filed a brief on behalf of Dale, including
committees from the United Methodist Church, the Unitarian
Universalist Association and the Religious Action Center of
Reform Judaism. Together members of this faction sponsor some
22,000 Scout units (roughly 20% of the total). If the Scouts
became a fiercely anti-gay group, many churches and schools
would quickly drop them. That's why the Scout oath is so mushy,
requiring its takers to be "morally straight," a term devised a
century ago, before the word "straight" had a sexual
implication. Today, however, it is the term to which scouting
officials must point when asked for a statement of their views
on gays.
For some, the Scouts have already gone too far in being
anti-gay. The city of Chicago has battled the Scouts for more
than four years. Its Commission on Human Relations ruled in 1996
that the Scouts broke a city ordinance when they barred former
eagle scout Keith Richardson from applying for a job because he
is gay. The next year the American Civil Liberties Union of
Illinois sued Chicago itself for sponsoring 28 troops of
Explorers, a career-oriented Boy Scouts program for older youth.
It was the first time a chartering institution, rather than the
Scouts, had been sued. In 1998, the city relented and withdrew
its sponsorship.
But the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas, is
controlled by another faction in the debate, those for whom
"morally straight" definitely means sexually straight. In recent
years, members of the Mormon church have become a powerful force
within scouting. Today nearly 10% of the members of the Boy
Scouts Advisory Council live in Salt Lake City, Utah, home of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Latter-day
Saints constitute less than 2% of the U.S. population but 21% of
the boys in the core Boy Scouts program, more than any other
group.
The Latter-day Saints have been instrumental in helping defeat
pro-gay initiatives in at least three states. In 1995 Jack
Goaslind Jr., a prominent church member who currently sits on
the Scouts advisory council, said the church "would withdraw our
charter membership" if scouting were required to admit gays.
Moreover, in the Dale case, most major conservative groups in
the U.S., from the Family Research Council to the Union of
Orthodox Jewish Congregations, have sided with the Scouts.
But the most wrenching internal controversies for the Scouts
have involved gay boys, not gay leaders. Local scoutmasters
routinely allow boys who come out to remain in scouting, though
if headquarters finds out, locals risk losing their charter. In
August a 16-year-old eagle scout applied for a job at Camp
Yawgoog, a Boy Scout retreat 30 minutes west of Providence, R.I.
Camp director Gary Savignano, reeling from a recent pedophilia
scandal, asked the boy if he was gay. When the boy said yes,
Savignano told him he couldn't have the job.
A sit-in ensued, and someone eventually pointed out that Rhode
Island has a law against anti-gay discrimination. The local
Scout council issued a statement offering the kid the job. But
when the men at Scout headquarters heard about the controversy,
they had spokesman Gregg Shields confirm that the boy can't be a
scout if he is gay. The local council quickly backtracked,
reaching an uneasy compromise with headquarters: the boy kept
the job--and his scouting membership--but he had to agree not to
talk about being gay. Since then, the United Way and other
funders have been under pressure to stop donating to the Scouts.
Most such skirmishes are on hold as everyone waits for the
Supreme Court. In the meantime, the Boy Scouts try to remain an
organization where no one talks about homosexuality in an age
when everyone talks about it.
--With reporting by Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Wendy
Cole/Chicago and William Dowell/Camp Yawgoog
[SIDEBAR]
A STRAIGHT ALLY FOR GAYS
The Scouts' Worst P.R. Problem
In some ways Steven Cozza is a typical 15-year-old. He fidgets,
likes to wrestle and play soccer, and nearly dies when Mom brags
that he was voted freshman "King of Hearts." But Cozza is
unusual in the way he left the Boy Scouts. Often, guys his
age--especially those who play four sports and tip their hair
blond--quit because they think scouting is for dorks. Cozza left
because, he says, "I was shocked that the Boy Scouts, which are
supposed to embrace the best in our country, are embracing the
worst: bigotry."
Cozza, who has been around his family's gay friends as long as
he can remember, was so upset that the Scouts exclude gays that
he helped found an organization meant to pressure the Scouts to
change. The group, Scouting for All, also tried to start its own
troop, open to everyone (even girls). National scouting
headquarters said no. But because of Cozza's credentials--he
became an eagle scout at 14--and because Scouting for All has
become popular on the Web, he's one of the Scouts' nastiest p.r.
problems. He has appeared in newspapers around his hometown of
Petaluma, Calif., and has met with his Congresswoman, Democrat
Lynn Woolsey, to protest the Scouts. On April 30, Cozza is even
scheduled to speak at the gay march on Washington--a straight
kid who will be cheered by a sea of gay protesters.
Privately, some scouting officials allege that Cozza is the
puppet of his social-worker father and a family friend who was
kicked out of the Scouts. In fact, Scott Cozza, 46, endlessly
publicizes Scouting for All. (As his wife Jeanette notes, "Scott
always did the boycott-grapes, Cesar Chavez thing.") And the
Scouts ejected friend Dave Rice, 70, a scout leader for 50
years. Officials said he was preaching his pro-gay politics to
kids, which Rice denies.
But Steven Cozza speaks for himself just fine. When he's called
a "fag" because of his views, he says, he rolls his eyes. He
adds, "Scouting is a good organization. But this part has to
change."
THE SCOUT OATH
"On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my Country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally
straight"
John Cloud/New York With reporting
by Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Wendy Cole/Chicago and William Dowell/Camp
Y, Law: Can A Scout Be Gay? The Boy Scouts' battle to stay straight goes
to the Supreme Court. , Time, 05-01-2000, pp 34+.