Scouted Out
- From: "GWhyte" <gwhyte3003@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 09:21:51 -0400
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/08/scouting.html
Scouted Out
News: A recent dismissal by the Boy Scouts of America sheds light on the
consequences of the organization's discriminatory practices.
By Clint Hendler
August 2, 2005
In 1973, fresh out of college, Dennis St. Jean was hired by the Boy Scouts
of America. He quickly worked his way up, serving in a variety of executive
positions across the Northeast. In 1991 he was transferred to the BSA's
headquarters in Irving, Texas, where, as Assistant Director of Professional
Development, he taught management skills to thousands of employees across
the country. Ten years later, St. Jean stepped down and moved to the Florida
Keys to become General Manager of Sea Base in the Florida Keys. There, he
and his seasonal staff of 2000 supervised the 11,000 Boy Scouts who came
year-round to snorkel, scuba, and sail at one of scouting's three national
high adventure programs.
But on January 28, 2005, according to St. Jean, he became the
highest-ranking and longest-serving professional scouter in the history of
the BSA to be fired merely for being gay. St. Jean had just successfully led
Sea Base through a trying hurricane season when a representative from Irving
came to Florida and presented him with the "evidence": a copy of his bill
from Lighthouse Court Gay Guesthouses, where he had vacationed months
before. (St. Jean believes the bill was obtained by a disgruntled Sea Base
employee who had somehow found out about the trip.) Days later, a registered
letter from Irving stated that the BSA had "lost confidence" in St. Jean's
ability to serve as an employee. "I was like a deer in headlights," recalls
St. Jean. "I was dumbfounded-I felt devastated, angry, hurt." The BSA's
national spokesperson refused to comment on what he called a "personnel
issue," but St. Jean, who says he had never received a professional
evaluation that was less than glowing, can see no other explanation for why
he was let go.
It is not at all clear exactly when the BSA started forbidding membership to
gays and non-theists; for the first seven decades after the organization's
1910 founding the issue never came up in a public way. It wasn't until a
series of court cases in the wake of a lawsuit filed by a California
Scout-who was forced out after taking a boy to senior prom-that the BSA's
membership policies became a legal issue.
The BSA's requires all of its approximately four million youth and adult
members (who include about 4,000 employees) to meet its discriminatory
membership standards, which were protected by the Supreme Court's 2000
ruling in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. The 5 to 4 decision agreed with the
BSA's claim that its membership policies were a form of speech legally known
as "expressive association," and were thereby protected by the First
Amendment. Since the decision the BSA has shown no sign of changing its
mind, and that's angered many who, Like St. Jean, have otherwise felt that
they had a home in scouting.
While the National Council's expenditures-$125 million in 2004-are privately
funded, the organization has long benefited from a wide variety of in kind
contributions and support from state, local, and federal governments. Dale
triggered a battery of anti-discrimination lawsuits against the BSA,
resulting in court decisions that restricted governmental support for the
organization. The most important case yet decided involves the Boy Scout
National Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill-an Army base in Northern Virginia, which
has hosted the event every four years since 1981-which closes its nine-day
run tomorrow. An estimated 40,000 scouts and leaders from across the country
will attend this year's summer camp-like gathering. The Department of
Defense views the Jamboree as a unique opportunity to educate boys about
careers in the military, and gives the military experience in setting up an
event akin to running a refugee camp. The Pentagon expects to spend about
$7.3 million on in-kind services in support of the Jamboree. This support
accounts for about 80 percent of all federal funds directed to the Boy
Scouts, according to Adam Schwartz, an attorney for the ACLU. But this
spring, a Federal District Court judge for Northern Illinois declared the
BSA a religious institution, and hence ruled that the military funds
violated the Establishment Clause-which limits government support for
organized religion.
To fight its many legal and public relations battles, the BSA is relying on
support from a long roster of conservative and religious organizations, who
see the Scouts as just another front in the ongoing culture wars to preserve
what they, and the BSA, call "traditional values." Robert Bork Jr.-a former
fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and the son of Ronald
Reagan's failed Supreme Court nominee-has been hired to coordinate public
relations for the scouts; his campaign's centerpiece website recommends
related articles from The Weekly Standard and Citizen, the magazine of James
Dobson's Focus on the Family. The Federalist Society, the foremost legal
think tank of the right, recently hosted a panel on the BSA's struggles,
featuring Ken Starr. Scout Councils in Florida and Georgia have held
fundraisers that have featured conservative celebrities Ann Coulter and
Oliver North.
Mark Noel, a leader in the Coalition for Inclusive Scouting, a national
network of activists working to reform the BSA's exclusive policies, thinks
that liberal parents and scouts have been "voting with their feet," deciding
that Scouting is no longer appropriate for their family after hearing about
the discriminatory polices at issue in the lawsuits. Indeed, since Dale, Boy
Scout rolls have dropped 3.8 percent. Cub Scout numbers have dropped by a
staggering 13.8 percent-a decrease that likely foreshadows a similar drop
among older Scouts in a few years time. But the reduced public support has
perhaps had a more direct effect: One Portland BSA employee attributed a 10
percent drop in his Council's enrollment after the city forbid recruitment
during school hours. Meanwhile, with corporate sponsors and local United Way
affiliates cutting funds to BSA Councils, hiring has slowed. According to
St. Jean, the BSA calculates that each new professional scouter usually
recruits about 1,500 new boys.
The BSA, for its part, insists that the decline is unrelated to the fallout
from its membership policies, instead pointing to changing age demographics
and a general decrease in interest in scouting-related activities. But the
population of eligible boys has held steady, and the Girl Scouts-a similar
yet separate organization that does not discriminate on the basis of
religion or sexual orientation-has continued to grow.
No matter the exact cause, however, the drop in enrollment is increasing the
influence of those within the organization who support BSA's discriminatory
rules. Internal efforts to reform membership policies have been thwarted by
the BSA's Religious Relations Committee, which has long been dominated by
representatives of conservative churches. (The Mormon Church, whose
adherents are about 2 percent of the general population but account for
about 13 percent of BSA membership, is usually described as the chief
impediment.)
But reform efforts are unlikely to get far as long as the scouts continue to
stifle dissent. New leaders are required to sign a pledge stating that they
believe that someone cannot be the "best kind" of citizen without believing
in God. Activists report that the BSA maintains a "litmus test" and refuses
to promote any professional who disagrees with the policy.
Noel, concerned about the future of Scouting, points to polls that show
younger Americans to be more tolerant than previous generations; these
future parents will soon decide whether or not to encourage their sons to
join. And he worries that Scouting, which used to respect the values of a
broader swath of Americans, will have made up their minds for them.
It's been more than six months since St. Jean was fired. So far, his efforts
to reach an out-of-court financial settlement with the BSA for wrongful
termination have been unsuccessful; he soon plans to file suit against the
organization, under a Monroe County, Florida, ordinance prohibiting
employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and has
retained an out-of-state lawyer who previously obtained a settlement for
another gay client fired by the BSA.
He's been unemployed since his firing. With his seniority stripped away, the
new job he'll soon start will pay about half what he earned at Sea Base. And
it will not be with the organization he joined as an eight year old cub
scout and "never left"-that is, until they kicked him out.
Clint Hendler is an editorial intern at Mother Jones.
.
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