Methodist board urges Scouts to drop exclusion of homosexuals

by Art Toalston                                                                                                               Vol. XII, No. 10, Nov/Dec 1999

The United Methodist Board of Church and Society has called for the Boy Scouts of America to end its policy of excluding homosexuals from its ranks. Otherwise, the social action agency of the 8.2-million-member denomination implied, Methodists should consider ending their ties to Scouting. The 60-member board approved a statement on the Boy Scout issue by a two-thirds vote during its Oct. 7-10 meeting in Washington. The board's statement notes that United Methodists sponsor 11,738 Boy Scout units, encompassing 421,579 boys. "While the General Board of Church and Society would like to enthusiastically affirm and encourage this continuing partnership of the church and scouting, we cannot due to the Boy Scouts of America's discrimination against gays," the board stated. "The United Methodist Church ... strongly condemns discrimination based on sexual orientation," the board said, noting that the Boy Scouts' policy "conflicts with our [church's] Social Principles."

The board's statement, which affirms a recent New Jersey Supreme Court ruling against the Boy Scouts' exclusion of homosexuals, conflicts with the position taken by the denomination's Commission on United Methodist Men in September in opposition to the New Jersey court ruling the previous month.

The Commission on United Methodist Men, which handles the church's involvement with the Boy Scouts, is roughly equal to the Board of Church and Society in church governance status.

The action by the Commission on United Methodist Men was noted during a vigorous discussion by the Board of Church and Society of its proposed statement. A proposal that the board authorize further study of the matter and schedule it for consideration at its next meeting in October 2000 was defeated by just one vote, United Methodist News Service reported.

The Board of Church and Society's statement references the denomination's Social Principles that affirm the human rights and civil liberties of homosexual people, United Methodist News Service reported. The

Social Principles are contained in the denomination's Book of Discipline. The board's statement acknowledged that "only the General Conference speaks for the entire denomination." The next such meeting, held every four years, will be in Cleveland next May.

The Washington Times, in an Oct. 13 report, cited one unnamed United Methodist official as predicting that the Board of Church and Society's stance against the Boy Scouts would force the General Conference to deal with the issue. The Times also reported that the Board of Church and Society has announced it will support the legal position of Lambda Legal Defense Fund in opposing the Boy Scouts' appeal to the Supreme Court of the New Jersey Supreme Court's Aug. 4 ruling that Scouting is a "public accommodation" that must be open to all, like hotels or restaurants.

The Times also reported that the board's general secretary, Thom White Wolf Fassett, had charged the men's commission with supporting discrimination in violation of church law. "I believe the implication of the members voting on this would cause the men's commission to look again at their support of discrimination against a certain group of people," Fassett was quoted as saying. Fassett described the Board of Church and Society as the "trustees of the social principles of the United Methodist Church" in carrying out Christian social action.

The head of the men's commission, Joseph L. Harris, had told The Times in August that the church planned to triple its support for Scouting by starting a troop in every one of its 37,000 congregations. [BP]