NEW JERSEY JUDGES HAVEN'T LEARNED SCOUTING IS PART OF PARENTING

In Dale vs. Boy Scouts of America, the New Jersey Court of Appeals ruled that the Boy Scouts are a "place of public accommodation" and have no right to bar homosexuals from being Scout leaders. This case is based on the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. It does not require the Boy Scouts to admit homosexuals in Missouri.

Life goes on less chaotically here in the hinterlands than on the coasts, but we Midwesterners should not be complacent. There is a national movement to force the Boy Scouts to accept homosexuals and atheists. The Dale case is an alarm of the battle that is already raging around us. We would do well to review this case and the issues it raises.

James Dale was a Scout and then an assistant Scoutmaster. His Scout registration was rejected when his picture appeared in a Newark newspaper as co-president of the Rutgers University Lesbian/Gay Alliance. Dale told the paper that he had only pretended to be straight in high school. He sued under New Jersey law for reinstatement as a Boy Scout leader.

Someday the Dale case may be taught in law schools. It will be an example of how drunk judges become with their own power at the end of the 20th century. It is a lesson in how indifferent these judges became to the people's law and to the reality of the people's lives.

The Dale court stretched the statute to find that the Boy Scouts of America is "a place of public accommodation." The people's elected representatives voted on the word "place," which is not a synonym for organization, but the court had to read the law "with an approach sympathetic to its objectives." Otherwise, the court could not get the result for which it was straining.

The court next found that the BSA was not "distinctly private." This is because the BSA is large (because it is successful). The court decided that 5 million boys and leaders cannot be a private organization even though every one of them must promise to live by the same oath.

Three judges weighed the public-policy issues in this case as a smug mini-legislature. They measured the Boy Scouts' right to freedom of association and found it lacking. The Scouts' freedom to define what is "morally straight" and to require members to be morally straight did not equal the importance of freeing New Jersey from the "menace" of this discrimination. As a result, these three judges took it upon themselves to eradicate "archaic and stereotypical notions about homosexuals that bear no relationship to reality." Oh.

Fear not, said the court, for we have determined that forcing the BSA to accept gay leaders will not affect Scouting "in any significant way." After all, said the court, the Boy Scouts were not organized to work against gay rights. How ironic. If Boy Scouts were taught to hate gays instead of just not to follow them, the court might have left the Scouts alone.

The court's most incredible assertion was that Mr. Dale, president of the Rutgers Lesbian/Gay Alliance, would not "instill in [the boys] notions about the homosexual lifestyle." Citing a handful of academic journals, the court dismissed the importance of a heterosexual role model as "homophobia."

The court said that there is no empirical proof that homosexual role models will encourage conduct that the Boy Scouts see as not "morally straight" or "clean." Enough! What parent would offer his son as a lab rat for that experiment?

I will leave it to others to make the scriptural and theological arguments against homosexuality. My argument rests on secular ground. It is grounded in the same experience as millions of other old Scouts and the same experience as millions of parents.

My Scoutmaster was the first adult whom I was encouraged to call by his first name. That sounds quaint now, doesn't it? But that small concession to an 11-year-old taught me that I could have adults as friends.

My Scoutmaster was a genius at whittling. Many Band-Aids later, we still wanted to whittle. He knew all about knots. We built a suspension bridge. He knew about hiking and camping and everything you needed to know to be a good Scout. He was the ultimate role model, physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight. How could we not want to be like him?

Scoutmasters wear their uniforms to encourage the boys to wear theirs. They refrain from bad habits. By the time a Tenderfoot becomes and Eagle, he knows what all true leaders know: that true leaders lead by example.

Over time, that role modeling pays off. My grandfather was a Scout leader in the 1920s. When he died at 93, some of his Scouts were at the funeral with admiring tales of great adventures long ago.

I was lucky that my father and grandfather were men to admire. But for many boys, their Scout leader may be the only positive role model they know. And now New Jersey parents are told they must accept homosexuals as Scout leaders.

This case is not just about James Dale. There is a larger movement afoot, complete with Web sites advocating gay and atheist "rights" to be Scouts.

The ultimate goal of the homosexual rights groups, which sponsored this litigation, is not merely tolerance. They want to create a society in which homosexuality is the moral, legal, social and religious equal of heterosexuality.

There are those who will say that anyone who denies gays equal access to every experience is a homophobe or a bigot. Parents can avoid this name calling, but not without a price.

If you concede homosexuals totally equal status in our society, you must be ready to accept gays a role models who will influence your child. If you follow the New Jersey Court of Appeals, you must be equally happy if your child grows up to be a heterosexual or a homosexual or perhaps a dabbler somewhere in between.

I believe that I speak for the overwhelming majority of parents -- conservatives and liberals, believers and nonbelievers -- when I say that we will love our children no matter what, but the gay lifestyle is not what we hope for our children.

Everything we know about life teaches us what the New Jersey Court of Appeals has not learned: that children learn by example. The court has also failed to learn that Scouting is a part of parenting and that a parent's ultimate right and duty is to guide his child safely toward an adulthood that shares the parents' heartfelt values. When the parents of 3 1/2 million boys enrolled their sons in Scouting, they said the Boy Scouts teach those heartfelt values.

Scouting has always been about values. The Dale decision could begin the destruction of an organization that since 1915 has been the very best at training boys to become men and to have fun doing it. The Boy Scouts have appealed this decision. But if worse comes to worst, I hope the Boy Scouts will take a stand and say that enough is enough.

If the appeals fail, the law can still be changed. I hope the Boy Scouts will tell the people of New Jersey to choose between the Boy Scouts and the gay-rights activists. Even in this age of moral relativism, there are some issues where you must be on one side or the other.

Benjamin F. Lewis of Cape Girardeau is a partner in the Vogel Layton & Lewis law firm.