As your ally on this issue, Monkey, observed, this is not the core of the issue–it’s that municipalities with anti-discrimination regulations also have regulations against supporting organizations that don’t abide be the same code. It’s not about a public/private split, it’s about non-discrimination regulations having some teeth in them.
If the ACLU raises a stink about it, that’s good: it’s their job to do so. Losing a case doesn’t mean their mission ceases.
I keep thinking that, if the BSA had the right to exclude black children because they’re a private organization publicly affirmed by the Supreme Court, and municipalities cut their support, that we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
The logic here is whether the “membership” qualifications for a given publicly supported activity discriminate in an inappropriate manner. E.g., if San Diego wants to have girls’ and boys’ basketball leagues open to any girl/boy between the ages of 11 and 20, but specifically distinguishing on the basis of sex, and delimiting on the basis of age, that’s acceptable as it is open on a “rational” basis to any person who qualifies.
If you want to pay the admission charge to the San Diego Zoo or to a Chargers game, you’ll be admitted – no restrictions. (The question of whether either of these ought to be subsidized to the extent that that city does is a quite separate one. Generally, the legal theory is that a municipality may subsidize a private enterprise on the basis that its activities benefit the municipal economy in ways beyond the actual functioning of that business as a business – San Diego as a city benefits from having the Chargers as a resident team over and above income gained from the Chargers corporate entity, the jobs created, etc., through the people who come to town to watch Chargers games and spend money doing so, the local vendors who get additional sales to Chargers fans, etc.)
The Boy Scouts is an organization which nationally has defined itself as a private entity open to heterosexual and asexual boys between the ages of 11 and 18 who have a religious belief in a Creator. As such, its membership is inappropriately restricted, requiring a religious test and a “morals clause,” from what may be appropriately publicly subsidized.
The (hypothetical) National Aryan Boys Auxiliary, open for recreational and teaching purposes to blond boys who believe in white supremacy and supported by white supremacist, has every right to exist as a private club. It has no right to public funds or the use of public spaces.
The Catholic Boys Recreation Association, sponsored by the Catholic Church but open to any boy and specifically delimited as not teaching religion but merely providing healthy recreation for boys, has a like right to exist, but does not have “inappropriate” membership qualifications and further has the right to use public facilities in consequence.
My point is that the ACLU’s motive in this seems to be vengeance. It’s not about municiple regulations. It’s about attacking the Boy Scouts. Shoot man, after they lost the case in 2000, the ACLU tried to paint the Boy Scouts as a hate group! They can’t stand the little kerchief wearing tykes. As someone who supports the ACLU, I worry that they have developed an unhealthy obsession. If you go to their website, the San Diego Boy Scouts case is item 1 - ahead of, and larger than, both the US VISIT fingerprinting system and search and seizure violations in Utah. Does this sound to you like an organization that has its priorities in order?
Sure, they have the letter of the ordinance on their side, but it’s a bit like a homicide detective following an aquited suspect so he can nail him for jaywalking.
As has been observed in other threads, the ACLU is not a monolithic organization with a strictly controlled national agenda; it’s more like a federation of ACLU chapters. To paint the entire group as bent on vengeance against the BSA is to commit the same fallacy of which you accuse the ACLU, namely, taking a single, arguably regrettable policy as an indicator of the entire organization’s character.
And you did make the point earlier (in your second post in the thread) that the key distinction wasn’t about public vs. private funds, it was about a conflict between the BSA’s judicially protected restrictions and the anti-discrimination regulations of the public entities supporting them.
And can we please quit making it sound like the sole purpose of the ACLU is to stifle the fun of good, clean, American boys? The ACLU has nothing against individual Boy Scouts. It’s the organization as an organization that they’re trying to keep from having its cake and eating it, too. If the BSA wants to be a private organization with a right to discriminate against classes of people, that’s fine. But guess what? That conflicts with a fair number of municipal and state nondiscrimination statutes. So the BSA has a choice: they can either clean up their act with regard to the discrimination, or they can lump it and accept the consequences of their bigotry. Simple, no?
Simple, yes, jayjay, then as a consequence of their indiscrimination, the Boy Scouts can sometimes be molested by the Gay Scouts safely on municipal property.
Or do you think that gay scoutmasters are more honorable than gay priests?
The ACLU doesn’t discriminate. And that is their problem.
*:: In a scene worthy of a grade A Hollywood flick, or at least a Van Dam B movie, Monkey throws his gun over his shoulder and leaps out the window just before the train derails and tumbles down the mountain in a ball of flames. Dusting himself off, our simian hero looks at the camera and says:: *
Milum, your neanderthal sensibilities are beneath my dignity to even notice anymore. I refuse to sully Great Debates with any hostility to someone so far below civilized 21st century humanity as you. Have a nice life.