High court taking up issue of gays in scouts
By Richard Carelli, Associated Press, 01/14/00
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court today agreed to decide whether the Boy Scouts of America can exclude homosexuals as troop leaders.
The justices said they will review a ruling in which New Jersey's highest court said the organization unlawfully ousted a young man, James Dale, after learning he is gay. Their decision is expected by July.
The state court ruled last summer that the Boy Scouts' denial of membership to homosexual boys and leaders violated a New Jersey law banning discrimination in public accommodations.
Lawyers for the Boy Scouts told the justices that the state court's ruling "endangers important constitutional principles of freedom of speech and freedom of association."
At stake, they said, are "constitutional rights at the heart of our free society: the freedom of a private, voluntary, noncommercial organization to create and interpret its own moral code, and to choose leaders and define membership criteria accordingly."
But lawyers for Dale said there is "no evidence" to support the Boy Scouts' contention "that preventing it from discriminating against its gay members would in any way alter or burden the messages, purposes and values that bring Scouting's diverse members together."
