The center of it transforms scouting s devotion to moral fitness into simple relativism. Instead, moral fitness is deemed an individual choice. Her Honor extracts this sunbeam, not from a cucumber as in Swift, but from a fine passage in the Boy Scout Handbook that speaks of a scout s duty to follow his conscience. When the Scouts encourage a boy to follow his conscience, the justices interpret this to mean that whatever the boy thinks is right, is indeed right. They seem not to know that conscience cannot speak on both sides of a moral question, there being good conscience and bad conscience.
Acts can be unconscionable.
Scouting is built upon this distinction. The Jersey justices do not seem to know it, which is a commentary upon our time. The New Jersey justices draw the conclusion that the Boy Scouts stand for nothing in particular. This, in turn, prepares the way for the conclusion that scouting is a public accommodation. In fact the scouts have never held out a sign to say that the public may enter.