Boy Scouts Reaffirm Discrimination

The Boy Scouts of America have reaffirmed their policy of excluding openly gay boys as member and gay or lesbian adults as leaders.  And of course they have the Supreme Court-affirmed right to do this because of a 5-4 ruling in 2000.

The Supremes, in their wisdom, said the BSA, as a private organization, can decide "what values it wants to inculcate."  By this logic, why can't a private business refuse to sell to blacks or gays or, in Arizona, those damn Mexicans?

Here's the trouble with that kind of legalistic thinking, or at least one of the troubles. It ignores the fact that, in daily life (and these decisions always involve real lives, remember) the distinction between what is private and  what is public is blurred. Obviously that bigoted store owner who might like to decide who he sells to, ignoring the financial stupidity of such a policy, can't do so because his private store doesn't exist in some geographical or social vacuum.

And neither to the Boy Scouts.  Imagine this scenario.  The Boy Scouts in Anytown USA get free use of some public space, perhaps the school, perhaps a city recreation area, perhaps a campground.  Any gay teenage in that town who is denied his desire to join the scouts, or parent of such a gay teenager, knows that the city is probably violating one of its own ordinances, or a state ordinance, about providing public aid to organizations that discriminate.

But because of the five Supremes in 2000, who live in some imaginary world of abstractions, or who try to imagine how many homophobic founding fathers could have danced on the head of a pin, that boy and his family will have no good options.  They could just sigh and accept the discrimination, which they're probably already familiar with, or they could spend time and money suing their city, with no guarantee of winning short of somewhere at the appellate level.  And when, after all this time and effort, they finally win their lawsuit, the city may have to stop supporting the scouts, but the scouts are still allowed to discriminate and the boy still can't join.  Because the scouts are a "private" organization.