UUA News: Scouts dragging feet on gay policy review

Scouts dragging feet on gay policy review

March 24, 2000
By JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

Scott Pusillo, a spokesman for Scouting for All, says a Rhode Island resolution asking the national Scouts to review its policy on homosexuals, was likely done to pacify major donors.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN -- It looked good on paper.

Facing the threat of losing contributions from major donors, the Narragansett Council, Boy Scouts of America, in November sent its national parent organization a two-page resolution asking it to review a 90-year-old policy that bans homosexuals.

But several months later, the resolution -- which followed a similar one sent by a Minnesota Boy Scouts council -- appears to be stagnant, not the forceful call for change that community leaders had hoped.

State Boy Scout officials say that since they sent the resolution, the national organization has not contacted them once. They admit that they haven't followed up on the resolution either. A

nd David Anderson, the new executive director for the Narragansett Council, has said that the general feeling is that national Boy Scout executives won't take any action until a ruling this summer by the U.S. Supreme Court on the Boy Scouts' appeal of the James Dale case - - in which the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the Scouts' barring of a gay troop leader violated the state's antidiscrimination laws. The ruling could decide whether the Boy Scouts are a private organization that can let in whomever it wants.

The Boy Scouts have contended that their decision to ban homosexuals is rooted in a 1910 oath, stated on page 46 of the Boy Scout handbook. Scouts vow to "keep myself morally straight."

Yesterday, a representative from Scouting For All, a national group dedicated to changing the Boy Scout policy with a petition drive that has so far collected a half-million signatures, said the vaguely worded Rhode Island resolution was likely a way to smooth ties with the United Way and other supporters who were upset over an incident at Camp Yawgoog in August.

National attention focused on the pristine Hopkinton camp when a camp director told a 17-year-old Eagle Scout that he couldn't return to a full-time job on the same day that the director asked him if he was gay. The Scout had answered yes.

After the youth filed a complaint with the state Human Rights Commission, and staff members staged a sit-in in his support, the scouting organization offered him his job back.

Scott Pusillo, a spokesman for Scouting for All, came to the University of Rhode Island as part of a four-day symposium to explore spirituality and sexuality. He loves scouting, he said, except "this one thing."

He said in an interview that "in my heart," he wants to believe that Rhode Island Scouts feel that the policy against gays is wrong, but that in reality, he thinks the resolution was done "in pacification."

"They never said: 'We think this is wrong,' " said Pusillo, an openly gay troop leader who says he hasn't been kicked out of his New Jersey troop because of the James Dale case. "They could have done more than write one simple little letter. They could have tried to have open communication. They could have taken a stand."

In November, as the United Way was threatening to cut off support if Scout policy didn't change, and the Rhode Island Council of Churches, which sponsors more than 100 troops, applied pressure, the 40- member executive board of the Narragansett Council unanimously passed a resolution that seconded one sent to the national organization last year by the Indian Head Council, of St. Paul, Minn.

The Minnesota resolution called for the Boy Scouts of America to form a committee to study the ban on gays, and to report back this year. The resolution passed one committee, and now sits in the relationship committee, which reviews membership standards. The committee will not speak publicly about its actions, national Boy Scout spokesman Gregg Shields said yesterday.

Pusillo said he believes that the policy on gays has not yet been studied.

"This formation of a committee, in my view, it's just a public relations ploy," he said. "They're thinking, 'we'll just satisfy the United Way and these two councils . . ."

The Rhode Island resolution called for the national organization to conduct the review in a "timely and forthright manner."

Yesterday, Peter Reid, spokesman for the executive board of the Narragansett Council, said he believes the resolution is "headed for discussion" at the Boy Scouts of America national meeting in Nashville, Tenn., in May. But the board has not talked to national executives since it sent the resolution, Reid said. Reid was not sure who at the national Boy Scout headquarters had the document now.

"We have not heard anything from them, or contacted them about it, but we didn't expect to," he said. "That's normal."

He expects that it went to the national policymaking executive board, though he is not sure.

"That's where it was aimed certainly," he said.

The forum for such debate, he said, is at the national meeting.

"To try to push or cajole something prior to that would be premature," he said.

He said that anyone who thinks the Narragansett Council isn't moving fast enough to coax national Scouts doesn't understand the dynamics of an organizaton with a volunteer policymaking board. Pushing them, he said, "is not the way to work the business."

The Minnesota council also has not heard about the status of its resolution, Indian Head executive director John Andrew said yesterday.

"I've heard that it has not been shelved, but they tend to keep a lid on the discussion process," he said.

Andrew said it would be "fairly common sense" for national Scouts to wait until the Supreme Court ruling on the James Dale case.

"If we were to implement a policy change at this time, and then the Supreme Court sends us off in a different direction, it would be a waste of time," he said.

In the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling last summer, justices said that Scout organizations are a public accommodation because they form partnerships with fire departments, police departments, and other public entities. Therefore, the court said, they cannot discriminate.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Jan. 14 to hear the Boy Scouts appeal next month.

Anderson, of the Narragansett Council, told Providence Journal columnist M. Charles Bakst recently that the state Scouts figure that the national organization is waiting for the courts to tell it what to do.

Mormon and Methodist churches together are the largest sponsor of Boy Scout troops. But the United Way is the largest financial contributor to the organization. The United Way of Southeastern New England annually donates $200,000 to the Narragansett Council, and allows thousands of people to direct donations to the Scouts through United Way fundraising programs.

Because of the Boy Scout policy, the United Way has pulled its financing in San Francisco, New Haven, Conn., and Portland, Maine.

In November, the Southeastern United Way commended the Rhode Island Scouts for sending the resolution, but warned that it might cut financing if the national group doesn't follow up on its pledge to study the policy.

The United Way wouldn't say yesterday how it viewed the state Scouts' progress so far, but it is, along with the council on churches, inviting the Boy Scouts to a forum on diversity and gay issues in the late spring, according to Steve Conners, a United Way spokesman.

In the meantime, Anderson is focusing on expanding Rhode Islanders' participation in a quasi-scouting program called "Learning for Life." The classroom curriculum is offered to schools by Scouts and is designed to teach ethics and self-esteem. Participants aren't required to be Scouts or follow Scout policies. National Scout leaders have described the program as a way to increase participation in scouting, while protecting traditional scouting programs from legal challenges.

Several troops nationwide, including a couple in Rhode Island, are adopting their own antidiscrimination policies, Pusillo said.

Barrington Cub Scout leader Cindy Capra wrote a letter in protest of the policy against gays, and asked as many people as she could to send it to the national Scouts in Texas.

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