Young Dale joined the campus gay and lesbian organization, becoming co-president after three months. After he was quoted in that capacity in a local newspaper story, the Monmouth Council of the Boy Scouts, which 16 months earlier had approved Dale's application to be an assistant scoutmaster of Troop 73 in Matawan, N.J., notified Dale that his registration was revoked. Two years later, immediately after New Jersey enacted a law protecting the civil rights of gays, Dale filed a lawsuit against the Scouts, apparently charging them with violating the new law before it was enacted. That case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court April 26. An avowed homosexual would not be a role model for those values.
All troops are open to boys of any religion.
Nor does the organization discriminate based on race. I learned to tie a few knots, but primarily the troop was the best place in my small, rural town for underage youths to cop cigarettes and porn magazines. But I don't know that the Girl Scouts should be required to accept heterosexual men in their sleep-over tents, either. Happily, the present case is one in which constitutional principles and common sense are well aligned. Simply put, a private organization ought to have the right to set its own membership requirements, and to expel those who assert sharply differing doctrines.