ACLU and Lesbians Attack Boyscouts In 9th Circuit

Posted on February 11, 2006

An ACLU lawsuit on behalf of an agnostic, lesbian couple seeking to nullify the Boy Scouts’ long-standing lease with a San Diego park will be heard in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, widely regarded as the nation’s most liberal.

The city of San Diego is appealing a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling in 2003, which determined the agreement violates the First Amendment’s ban on state-sponsored religion.

Oral arguments will begin Tuesday morning in Pasadena, Calif. A decision is expected later this year.

Judge Napoleon Jones said in his 2003 ruling the Boy Scouts are a religious organization with a “religious purpose” because adult leaders and youth members are required to believe in a “formal deity” and to swear duty to God.

Backers of the Boy Scouts argue that while the group promotes belief in God, it represents no particular denomination or religion. Individual troops can be sponsored by a church, synagogue, mosque or secular organization.

The local Desert Pacific Council of the Boy Scouts has used the northwest corner of Balboa Park, near the San Diego Zoo, since 1940. It has leased the land for $1 a year since 1957, and the city council approved a 25-year lease agreement at the end of 2001.

The Boy Scouts argue Camp Balboa and a nearby city facility maintained at their expense, the Youth Aquatic Center, are used extensively on a first-come, first-served basis by the public as well as by Scouts. The plaintiffs have never even tried to use the facilities, they maintain.

The ACLU represents Lori and Lynn Barnes-Wallace and their “Boy Scout-aged sons.”

One can readily assume how this will be ruled; we are talking about the 9th Circuit here. The ACLU want to force the BSA to welcome professing homosexuals and even to recruit gay Scout leaders. They’d also like to erase the mention of “duty to God”. The ACLU is waging more than just a battle; it is waging a campaign. Since 1981, it has participated in at least 14 cases against the Boy Scouts.

Allan Sears sums up the ACLU agenda here.

But then, it’s not surprising that a group that embraces NAMBLA would be tied up in knots by the Boy Scouts, an organization grounded in a traditional morality, promoting faith, family, and self-reliance. Such old-fashioned American “bigotry” seems infinitely more repulsive to the ACLU that the depravities of child sexual abuse.

This is why ACLU attorneys and their allies are working furiously to force the Boy Scouts to accept scoutmasters who engage in homosexual behavior, despite studies showing that those who engage in such behavior are more likely to become pedophiles than those who don’t.

Behind the blitzkrieg against the Boy Scouts is an essential conflict of interest: The ACLU is paving the legal way for an atheistic, libertine society, which puts them at cross-purposes with the God-fearing, self-disciplined kids who help old ladies across the street.

So the ACLU is bent on banishing the beliefs of the Boy Scouts, of traditional families, and of traditional churches by labeling them “hate,” an insidious danger that poisons the impressionable minds of young, naive Americans.

Yet they assure us that the ideas promoted by atheists, by advocates of homosexual behavior, and by the disturbed deviants of NAMBLA are harmless, incapable of seducing or destroying innocent lives – or at least that it doesn’t matter to them when such seductions and destructions occur.

Both convictions cannot be true. If the beliefs of any group, however powerfully expressed, exert no tangible influence on the minds and behavior of others, then the idea of “hate speech” makes no sense. But if ideas can inspire lawless behavior, NAMBLA is a threat. That’s a paradox the ACLU can’t afford to face. And our children are suffering the consequences.

The BSA, despite what any Court has deemed, is not a religious organization, and most definitely does not threaten the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Their real crime is to have won the Supreme Court case involving their First Amendment right not to admit an openly homosexual Scoutmaster. Ever since, a liberal war has been waged to strip them of any public association.

While the ACLU find the BSA a threat to America, they have no qualms defending terrorists, and child molesters. If one were to follow the ACLU’s flawed reasoning, a self professed NAMBLA member being denied a position as a Scout leader would be discrimination. The ACLU’s agenda here is not about public lands, they have been at war with the Boy Scouts for 30 years.

“This is about punishing the Boy Scouts—and anybody who associates with them—for winning [the right to maintain moral values].”

In short, the ACLU is trying to use the Scouts’ victory against them by arguing that their court-won right to preserve moral standards makes them “religious”—and therefore, they don’t have the right to exist in the secular realm.Citizen Magazine

One point of vulnerability is the fact that the city of San Diego leases land to 123 nonprofits beside the Scouts, including The Salvation Army, the Jewish Community Center and a couple of Protestant churches.

And one of the city’s oldest gay rights’ organizations—The San Diego Lesbian, Gay and Transgender Community Center—announces plans on its Web site to use “$825,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds managed by The City of San Diego” to renovate its own facilities.

The Boy Scouts are being treated differently “because of the message they espouse,” Lorence said. “And that’s classic viewpoint discrimination.”

The most dangerous thing about Jones’ ruling is that “it could easily be applied to churches,” Lorence warned, “because most churches require their members, and their pastors, to be Christians [in addition to opposing homosexuality].”

So religious-freedom lawyers are planning to file viewpoint-discrimination lawsuits on behalf of religious groups whose leases are threatened by the ruling. That’s a potent weapon, Lorence said, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that viewpoint discrimination violates religious groups’ “equal access” rights to public property. Even the 9th Circuit, infamous for declaring the “under God” reference in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, has upheld equal access.

To find out how you can support the Boy Scouts of America, visit www.bsalegal.org or call 972-580-2000. To help support other religious-freedom lawyers aiding the Scouts, contact Alliance Defense Fund, 15333 N. Pima Road, Suite 165, Scottsdale, AZ 85260; phone 480-444-0020; Web www.alliancedefensefund.org

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Comments

3 Responses to “ACLU and Lesbians Attack Boyscouts In 9th Circuit”

Tester on February 11th, 2006 3:18 pm

An article on how to quickly expose anti-Americanism;

http://futurist.typepad.com
apostle on February 11th, 2006 3:38 pm

Even if the Boy Scouts are considered a religious group, that does not disqualify them from the secular realm.
Meg on February 12th, 2006 9:52 am

Okay, let me get this strait, the boy scouts are mad that they are being discriminated against solely because they are an organization that discriminates. Sounds like they are getting a taste of their own medicine and don’t like it very much.

When will the world wake up and STOP discriminating against groups that discriminate!