News

Gays call high court Scout ruling "hollow" victory

By Chris Michaud

New York, June 28 (Reuters) - A Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday allowing the Boy Scouts to exclude gays was a "hollow" victory that could render the organisation extinct, gay activists and the Scout leader who sued the group said.

In a setback for gay rights advocates, the justices by a 5-4 vote overturned a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that the dismissal of a gay Scout leader had been illegal under the state's anti-discrimination law.

"This decision does sadden me," said James Dale, a one-time Eagle Scout and assistant Scoutmaster who was dismissed in 1990 after Scout leaders learned he was a gay. "But I really think that, overall, America is moving in the right direction," he told reporters in a teleconference.

"If the Boy Scouts of America are not willing to open up to gay needs... I think that, like the dinosaurs, they are making themselves extinct," he added, saying gay youths were coming out at younger and younger ages and needed the resources provided by the Scouts.

LOWER MEMBERSHIP

Officials from the Lambda Legal Defence and Education Fund, which pursued the case on Dale's behalf, said the decision would reduce the organisation's membership.

"Most fair-minded members and parents are going to question whether this is the youth programme they want to expose their kids to when there are other organisations out there," said Lambda senior staff attorney Evan Wolfson.

"The Boy Scouts have won today a hollow, Pyrrhic victory," Harlow said. "Their leaders and their lawyers have convinced five members of the Supreme Court that they are an anti-gay institution."

Now they have to live with that discriminatory position," she added. "The Boy Scouts will be a much more marginal institution in the future." Wolfson said that, while the decision was disappointing, "in many respects we think of it as a win."

"This case has triggered a very positive public awareness that gay youth exist and are entitled to participate in and receive youth programs," Wolfson said.

Wolfson pointed to a host of national youth groups that do not discriminate against gays, including the Girl Scouts and the Boys' Clubs of America, both of which filed briefs with the court on Dale's behalf.

"It's the Boy Scouts who are out of step," Wolfson said.