Catholic Boy Scouts: Be Very Prepared!

On August 4, 1999, the New Jersey Supreme Court, in the case of James Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, ordered the Boy Scouts to accept an openly homosexual scoutmaster. The Boy Scouts had contended that a homosexual lifestyle is contrary to the moral vision the Scouts seek to instill and that, as a private organization, their right to freedom of association protected their decision to dismiss Dale. A unanimous State Supreme Court ruled otherwise, contending that the Boy Scouts, as a “place of public accommodation,” come under the purview of New Jersey’s “Law Against Discrimination” (LAD). Since 1991 the LAD forbids places of public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of “affectional or sexual orientation.” Concurring in the judgment, Associate Justice Alan Handler assured the public that he would be in the vanguard of a new ethic, opining:

It is not tenable to conclude that because at one time “traditional moral values” were based on unsupportable stereotypes about homosexuals, those values have survived and endured unchanged in contemporary times. It is similarly untenable to conclude…that Boy Scouts — a federally chartered and nationally recognized organization with significant ties to governmental institutions and public entities that fully adhere to contemporary laws rejecting anachronistic stereotypes about homosexuality — remains entrenched in the social mores that existed at the time of its inception.

So, if you are carrying the baggage of “traditional moral values,” you had better get with it, especially in these “contemporary times.” If you happen to incorporate yourself, enjoy respect in the community, and have ties to public entities that “fully adhere to contemporary laws,” you’re in even deeper trouble. If you derive any Mammon from the public, even incidentally, forget about serving God!

Whether the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling will withstand appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court — and the Boy Scouts promise to appeal — is open to question, but this writer thinks the ruling will probably stand. After all, remember that the Supreme Court lectured Colorado voters about trying to ban “special privileges” for homosexuals in their State Constitution. (In New Jersey, a state that is almost 50 percent Catholic, it might seem, theoretically, that the LAD itself could be amended. But translating religious affiliation into public action in New Jersey has been difficult in practice.)

Dale v. Boy Scouts obviously has implications for Catholics, since many parishes sponsor Boy Scout troops. Would a Boy Scout troop under the auspices of a particular parish be compelled to hire an avowed homosexual like James Dale as a scoutmaster?

Catholic leaders in New Jersey and other states with laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation should begin to give thought to founding their own Boy Scouts-like organization. An eastern European precedent might help. Scouting was a very powerful movement in Poland between World Wars I and II. Besides the usual complement of skills, Scouting instilled a powerful love of country, something essential to a state recovering its independence after 123 years of partition. With the imposition of Communist repression on Poland, Scouting was quickly taken over by the regime as a vehicle for indoctrinating youth in the “virtues” of Marxism-Leninism. Because Catholic leaders like Cardinals Wyszynski and Wojtyla were acutely aware that the struggle for Poland would be a struggle for her youth, the Church developed her own outreach to young people, a kind of underground Scouting movement that stayed true to the ideals of Polish Scouting as it existed before World War II. Those ideals, which also survived in the Polish Diaspora in places like England and America, allowed the Church to reach out and form youth in a Christian worldview. Not having the official structures at her disposal, the Church created parallel ones.

Now, one thing that every survey of Catholicism in America shows is that the Church’s outreach to young people is one of her most neglected ministries. Particularly in the “sacramental gap” between Confirmation and Marriage, the Church in the U.S. has been — to put it charitably — awkward in working with young people. If, post-Dale, official Scouting structures have to accommodate the demands of a secular morality, then the time has arrived for Catholics to prepare to create their own structures. In remaining true to our own faith, we would also be remaining true to the ideals of the Scout Oath: “To do my duty to God and my country…. To keep myself…morally straight.”