c. 1998 Religion News Service

TRENTON, N.J. _ The Boy Scouts’ sexual mores went on trial Tuesday (Jan. 5) before the Supreme Court of New Jersey. For more than two hours in a Trenton courtroom, lawyers argued over whether the Boy Scouts can exclude homosexuals from leadership positions.

One lawyer said the First Amendment right to express discriminatory views is limited to organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, formed specifically to push such an agenda. Diverse groups like the Boy Scouts, open to all boys, cannot harbor such views, he said.

Another lawyer, however, defended the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy, saying that as a private group it has a right to require leaders to promote its values.”Scout leaders are supposed to be models for children in the program to copy,”said George A. Davidson, the New York attorney representing the Boy Scouts.

James Dale, 28, formerly of Middletown, N.J., the former Scout leader at the center of the case, failed to live up to the organization’s principles when he made public statements that suggested it is okay to pursue a homosexual relationship, Davidson said.”That is a message the Boy Scouts don’t want to put in the face of Boy Scouts,”Davidson said.

Justice Gary Stein pointed out that Dale never expressed his views at a Boy Scout activity.

Davidson said that didn’t matter. The moment Dale became a gay rights advocate and ended up quoted in The Sunday Newark Star-Ledger discussing the gay lifestyle, he”gave up his right to wear the Boy Scout uniform,”Davidson said.

The two sides clashed in a packed Trenton courtroom in a case that has garnered national attention. Television cameras from at least three states lined the Richard Hughes Justice Complex. Activists wearing the upside-down pink triangle denoting gay rights filled the courtroom to support Dale. Pro-family advocates were on hand to fend off what they believe is yet another assault on a venerable institution.

At the end of the arguments, Chief Justice Deborah Poritz indicated the court will issue a decision later.

The outcome of the landmark case will have far-reaching consequences for the gay rights movement. If a majority of the seven justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling forcing the Boy Scouts to allow gay leaders in the ranks of the organization, New Jersey’s highest court would be the first in the nation to issue such a decision.

The California Supreme Court ruled last March that the Boy Scouts is a”social organization”that could ban gays and agnostics.

Having pressed the case for eight years, Dale said yesterday he had no regrets and was willing to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. The lawyer for the Boy Scouts said the group likely would do the same if it gets an unfavorable ruling.

Values learned as a Boy Scout convinced Dale he had a duty to stand up against those who wish to keep gays out of the organization, he said outside the courtroom.”The anti-gay policy goes against everything I was taught in the Boy Scouts,”said Dale, who now lives in New York City and works coordinating health fairs on HIV and AIDS for Poz magazine, a publication aimed at people living with AIDS.”I am not going to lie about who I am,”said Dale, adding,”Bigotry and discrimination have no place in the Boy Scouts.” Dale, who joined Scouting at the age of 8, became an Eagle Scout, the Boy Scouts’ highest rank. He earned 30 merit badges and held numerous troop leadership positions, including assistant scoutmaster for Troop 73 in Matawan, N.J.

But he was kicked out in 1990 when a newspaper article identified him as co-president of the Rutgers University Lesbian and Gay Alliance. He was speaking to a group of guidance counselors and teachers about being a gay teenager.”He was a model scout,”said Evan Wolfson, Dale’s lawyer.”He was their poster boy. They sent him out to recruit, but when they found out he was gay, he was out.” Dale sued, saying the Boy Scouts had violated his civil rights.

A Monmouth County judge ruled the Boy Scouts could expel Dale. But in a 2-1 ruling, the Appellate Division of Superior Court said the Boy Scouts could not exclude gays, forcing the Supreme Court to settle the case.

In 1910, when the Boy Scouts was founded, homosexuality was a crime in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Davidson said.

Justice Stewart Pollock said times have changed and there is now some ambivalence in society about gays and lesbians.

Davidson acknowledged there is a division of opinion in broader society, but said the Boy Scouts still holds fast to the Judeo-Christian view that homosexuality is immoral.

Wolfson zeroed in on the fact that the Boy Scouts handbook and other literature failed to explicitly detail the group’s views on homosexuality.

Davidson, however, said the Boy Scouts did not want to put that message in front of children.”It doesn’t say anything about arson or forgery, either,”said Davidson, suggesting that some things simply do not need to be spelled out.

DEA END CARTER