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from Political News
The Boys Scouts and Illiberalism
In "The Battle over the Boys Scouts"
(The Weekly Standard, June 11, 2001), author Peter
Ferrara describes the fallout from the recent Dale
decision regarding the Boy Scouts. As he explains:
"...In response to the Dale decision, liberal and left-wing activist organizations began a
nationwide campaign to ostracize and isolate the Scouts. The Scouts may have a legal right to their policy
on gays, but these groups want the rest of society to ostracize them if they continue to exercise
that right. This attitude was best expressed by the
New York Times, which labeled the Scouts as
"something akin to a hate group" because they will not retain openly gay Scoutmasters.
"In a liberal society, tbe Boy Scouts should be free to decide whom they want as adult leaders
and what moral messages they want to communicate. Those who disagree with the Scouts would,
of course, be free to criticize them. They could even organize a private-sector boycott of the Scouts
if they wanted. But a more liberal-minded response would be to start their own competing
scouting organization.
"There is a model for such an approach. Some religious groups who think the Boy Scouts are
too secular started their own religious scouting groups years ago. Others who consider the
regular Scouts militaristic and too hierarchical have started competing groups.
"But there is something more fundamental at stake here, which explains why our modern
'liberals' have chosen instead a frontal attack on the Boy Scouts.
The true target of the anti-Scout groups is not the Scouts, but the traditional moral views they espouse. They wish to brand those views
as socially unacceptable discrimination.
"If the Boy Scouts are engaged in such discrimination and are 'akin to a hate group' as a result,
then so are the Catholic Church, traditional Protestantism, and Orthodox Judaism. Which leads to
the question: If the Left wins this cultural battle over the Scouts, what's next?
"All of this illiberalism stems from a fundamental change in the gay rights movement. It began
by arguing that adults should be free to do what they choose in the privacy of their own
bedrooms, without government interference. But today, the movement advocates the very different
proposition that the power of government should be used to force everyone to approve of homosexual
conduct, morally and socially.
"That cannot be achieved by liberal means, because it is not a liberal goal."
Updated: 8 February 2008
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