Saturday, 15 January 2000
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/0115N12.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide
whether the Boy Scouts of America can exclude gays as members
and troop leaders.
The justices said they will decide whether the organization had
a constitutional right to oust a young troop leader after learning
he is gay. The court is expected to hear arguments in April and
issue a decision by July.
New Jersey's highest court ruled last summer that the Boy Scouts'
denial of membership to homosexual boys and leaders violated a
state law banning discrimination in public accommodations.
But the Scouts' lawyer contends that law violated the organization's
rights of free speech and free association under the Constitution's
First Amendment.
``Scouting adheres to a moral belief . . . that homosexual conduct
is not moral,'' the Scouts' lawyer, George A. Davidson, said after
the high court granted review yesterday.
An openly gay person would not be a proper Scout role model, Davidson
said, adding, ``Boy Scouting is really all about sending messages.
The message is that you should be morally straight.''
But the attorney for James Dale, the former assistant scoutmaster
whose leadership role was revoked, said opposition to homosexuality
is not one of the Scouts' main purposes.
``As gay people we know how important the First Amendment is,''
said lawyer Evan Wolfson of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education
Fund. ``Their First Amendment rights are not being interfered
with. The members did not join the Boy Scouts for bigotry in the
first place.''
Dale was 20 and an assistant scoutmaster of a Matawan, N.J., troop
when in 1990 he was identified in a newspaper article as co-president
of a campus lesbian and gay student group at Rutgers University.
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