  The
UUA and the Boy Scouts of America:
A Continuing Struggle for Inclusiveness
March 16, 2005 Statement from the Unitarian
Universalist Association
For more than sixteen years, the Unitarian Universalist Association has voiced
its opposition to the discriminatory practices of the Boy Scouts of America.
Based upon the principles which guide the
Association, the UUA first protested against the BSA's discrimination against
agnostic and atheist scouts, and then protested against discrimination aimed
at gay scouts and scout leaders. In 1992, the UUA board of Trustees passed a
resolution opposing these discriminatory practices, and in 1993 the UUA revised
its Religion in Life award manual to include information on the Association's
stance on these issues.
The dispute with the BSA entered a new phase in May, 1998, when the BSA withdrew its authorization of the UUA's Religion in Life award because of the information in the Religion in Life manual. After a series of meetings, the Association agreed to revise its manual to remove the language the BSA found offensive and instead to inform UU scouts of its opposition to religious and sexual discrimination through other means. The BSA at first restored authorization for the award, but then rescinded its reauthorization. The UUA continues to encourage UU scouts to work for the Religion in Life emblem, to have it presented to them by their congregations, and to wear it with pride on the appropriate place on their uniforms.
In June, 2000, the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote overturned a unanimous ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the James Dale case and upheld the right of the BSA to bar from its ranks gay scouts and scout leaders. In the wake of the Dale decision, the Association has called for a halt to public funding for the BSA and a revocation of its Congressional charter. Many UU churches which have either sponsored or hosted scout troops are currently reviewing their relationships with the BSA.
The links which follow will take you to an extensive collection of UUA-BSA correspondence, a selection of media coverage of this issue, and texts of legal briefs and court decisions. If you are interested in discussing UU involvement in scouting, you are invited to subscribe to the UUA-sponsored electronic mailing list "UU-Scouting." To subscribe to this list (or to any other UUA-sponsored list), please go to the UU mailing lists subscription page.
Additional information will be added to this site as it becomes available.
For futher information, please contact UUA Director of Information John Hurley
at jhurley@uua.org or (617) 742-2100 x131.
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