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LetMyPeopleVote

LetMyPeopleVote's Journal
LetMyPeopleVote's Journal
January 29, 2013

I disagree

I was on the board of my temple when we had a fight over this issue. The compromise was that the troop and the pack would take a very liberal view of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and only enforce the rule if someone wore their scout uniform to a gay pride event. As far as my Temple was concerned no one should tell us who our leaders should be. BTW, two of the last three presidents of my Temple have been gay and they have had no problem with how the Troop and Pack have been operated.

By the same token, it would be difficult to tell a LDS unit that it had to accept gay scouts and gay leaders. That church should establish ist own qualifications for its leadership. The Dale opinion from the SCOTUS basically states that freedom of association means that each group should be allowed to establish its own membership standards and no one should force a church or other private association to accept someone as a member if that member does not meet the membership criterion for such organization. While I dislike the results of the SCOTUS decision, I basically agree that the First Amendment association clause must allow groups to set their own membership standards.

The proposed BSA policy extends the Dale ruling down to the individual chartering units and that is a good first step. To go beyond this, one would have to redefine or change the current interpretation of the First Amendment association clause.

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