Posted on 09/17/2003 6:29:41 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
City says scouts' use of land is in jeopardy The group's exclusion of gays and atheists is at issue. It has its local headquarters on city property. By Linda K. Harris Inquirer Staff Writer
The local Boy Scout council, which has enjoyed the free use of city property for its offices since 1929, may lose that benefit because of its policy of banning gays from scouting, city officials confirmed yesterday.
"We hope that this will not be the outcome," said Pat Coviello, executive vice president of the Cradle of Liberty Council.
The mayor's chief of staff, Joyce Wilkerson, said she contacted local council executives last week to advise them of an opinion handed down by City Solicitor Nelson A. Diaz.
Diaz had informed the Mayor's Office that the city's fair practices ordinance was in direct conflict with the policy of allowing the Boy Scouts to use the property at 22d and Winter Streets rent-free for offices. The reason for the conflict is the Boy Scouts' policy of excluding against gays and atheists, dictated by the national organization, said Barbara Grant, the mayor's spokeswoman.
A meeting between city officials and Boy Scout executives is scheduled for next week to discuss the matter. Cradle of Liberty is the nation's third-largest council and serves 87,000 youths in Philadelphia, Delaware and Montgomery Counties.
"We value the services they provide," Wilkerson said. "They do good work for the kids in a lot of neighborhoods in the city. We wanted to talk through the issues with them."
David H. Lipson Jr., board chairman of the local council, said, "My hope is they want to work with us. Our council has said we want to end discrimination of all types. It's been a difficult road. But we're committed to change. To punish us makes absolutely no sense," he said.
But gay civil rights leaders said the Cradle of Liberty Council still discriminated and so the city had no choice but to ask it to leave.
"I think the city is now obliged to terminate the lease," said Malcolm Lazin, executive director of Equality Forum, an international gay civil rights group based in Philadelphia. "This is an organization that discriminates and should not be given what is, in essence, a sweetheart deal."
Stacey L. Sobel, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights, said that she was sympathetic to the local Boy Scouts' good intentions, but that the council had fallen short.
"The bottom line is they're still discriminating," Sobel said. "This is another message to the local and the national Boy Scouts that they cannot continue to do business as usual."
In 1928, City Council passed a resolution allowing the Boy Scouts free use of land at 22d and Winter Streets near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Boy Scouts was allowed to build a headquarters there at its own expense, with the proviso that the building would immediately become the property of the city and must be turned over to the city with a year's notice, should the city want it.
The next year, the Boy Scouts built a grand Beaux Arts stone building for its headquarters, designed by noted architect Charles Z. Klauder. In 1971 the building was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.
"It's one of the real gems, small gems of the Parkway, and tends to be forgotten a lot," said Bruce Laverty, curator of architecture for Atheneum of Philadelphia, a special collections library with a specialty in architecture.
In 1993, the building's exterior and interior were renovated.
The building is now known as the Bruce S. Marks Scout Resource Center. Cradle of Liberty has another center, the Roger S. Firestone Scout Resource Center in Wayne.
The city's decades-long deal with the Boy Scouts became an issue in May when the Cradle of Liberty Council tried to liberalize an intractable national policy regarding the acceptance of gays. The local council, in defiance of the Boy Scouts of America's policy of not allowing gays to join, voted that it would not discriminate based on sexual orientation and religion, among many other things.
The council had been under pressure from the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, which had been making annual grants to the Boy Scouts of more than $400,000.
However, when the national organization, based in Irving, Texas, heard of the local council's move, it threatened to revoke the local charter and replace its board.
In early June, the local council folded under the pressure and quickly expelled a South Philadelphia Life Scout, Gregory Lattera, who openly acknowledged that he was gay.
After that, the Pew Charitable Trusts withdrew a $100,000 grant in June. In late July, the United Way board voted to retract the second half of its $400,000 grant for this year.
In June 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could bar gays from serving as troop leaders. That decision was hailed as a major victory by the national council.
They were looking for an excuse to line their pocket with more money, which was donated to them, just like 9/11.
How do you "direct" your contribution?
My fortune 500 company told me it was "too complicated" to do that. I've been out of United Way for 3 years.
Do others have to pay for similar use of the city's property?
If so, why should the Scouts or anyone else get special treatment?
The Scouts should stop taking handouts from the government. When they pay the bills they can call the shots.
Why should all citizens be forced to support the Scouts through this handout when some of them can't join? That's absurd.
I support the Scouts right to association. If they want to exclude gays and atheists, that's fine with me. But they're going to have to pay their own way.
"We value the services they provide," Wilkerson said. "They do good work for the kids in a lot of neighborhoods in the city. We wanted to talk through the issues with them."
Is this barter type arrangement available to all other groups, or just the Scouts?
You cannot be more wrong.
For over 200 yrs this country has provided more freedoms and tolerance to Jews, Hindu's, Moslems and atheists than any country in recorded history. These people have never been repressed. However, in recent yrs it has become the policy of certain people w/i these minorities to strip away all vestigages of America's rich cultural heritage that is inextricably entwined in the religious and moral foundations of Christianity.
Toward that end they have prostituted the US Judiciary and the Constitution to INVENT laws that were never existant. In doing this they have used the sledgehammer of the federal government to sue local school boards and city councils into compliance w/ an atheistic/humanistic psuedo nuetrality and moral relatisim.
This attack on the Boy Scouts is well coordinated and nationwide, it is the epitome of craven immorality. To imply that a group that refuses to advance sodomy and atheism is somehow morally repugnant and not deserving of public support when in fact the public supports those positions overwhelmingly is despicable.
Furthermore, you may direct the United Way on how to spend your money but I can assure the United Way feels NO obligation to honor that request and will spend the money as they see fit. I would recommend that you cannot support both the Boy Scouts AND the United Way. You need to decide which is the more worthy institution.
Finally, the feds have destroyed the tradition and deminished the value of both the Citadel and VMI for no good reason. I wish that both schools had chosen the path of Grove City College and refused all federal monies, but that is a hard road and the decision, which never should have come to pass, was forced upon them.
It is past time for us to stand up to all those that wish to destroy our great patrimony, whose goal is a bland and lifeless public sense of community which can never make any value judgement, judgements that are censored and silenced in the public square.
You may wish for an amoral society but what you will get instead is an immoral one.
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