Merlyn_LeRoy

As far as I can tell, the $200,000/year lease wouldn't be a modification of the original arrangement. It would just be: 1) end the lease, city owns building 2) offer building to public for $200,000/year

If you read the article, it would have been legal for the city to terminate the agreement without giving a reason; what the jury found illegal was the way the city told the C of L that they could keep the agreement if the C of L renounced the national policy.

Beavah, just use google news to look up any story mentioning Boy Scouts; I'm not reading political boards, these are US online newspapers from all over the country. Nearly any story mentioning scouts that allows reader comments will have comments from people on how they won't associate with the BSA. Cub scout membership has consistently fallen for the last 12 years.

I know anecdotes aren't data, beavah, but even ordinary stories mentioning boy scouts will often have comments from people about how they won't let their sons join the BSA. These aren't political stories, just comments in online newspaper stories that mention boy/cub scouts in some way.

It's been falling steadily since 1998, which is when the BSA's policies against gays first became national news (the NJ state supreme court Dale decision). And if you look around the web, nearly everyone who writes off the Boy Scouts as a possible activity for their sons cites their disagreement with the BSA's discrimination against gays and atheists -- this includes a lot of fathers who were in Scouts, were Eagles, etc. That is the overwhelming reason I see people state, nothing else even comes close.

Why are you talking about me in the third person, Ed? I posted it. By the way, BSA membership continues its free-fall. Doesn't that chap your shorts?

Going by what the jury said, even if the BSA excluded blacks & Jews the city couldn't stop the $1/year lease. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20100623_Federal_Jury_Decides_in_Favor_of_Scouts.html A federal jury Wednesday decided that Philadelphia violated the Boy Scouts' First Amendment rights by using the organization's anti-gay policy as a reason to evict them from their city-owned offices near Logan Square. "We can't be kicked out of the building or evicted and we don't have to pay any rent," Scouts' attorney William M. McSwain said after the unanimous verdict by a jury of six women and two men. Scouts lawyers expect U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter to issue a permanent injunction that bars the Scouts' eviction because of their policy - set by the national organization - that homosexuals cannot be scouts or troop leaders. That's not necessarily the end of the dispute, however. The jury's answers to the 11 questions on the verdict sheet were "inconsistent," City Solicitor Shelley Smith said, and when verdict sheets have inconsistent answers, the potential exists that the verdict is flawed. We will be exploring our options." In an unusual address to the jury, Buckwalter said he hopes the Council and the city can reach a final negotiated solution. The Scouts are willing to negotiate and would like to end the nearly seven-year standoff, said Jason Gosselin, the lead attorney for the scouts. "We want to sit down with the city and see if we can resolve this" permanently, Gosselin said. Under the ordinance that leased the land to the Scouts, the city has the right to evict the Scouts without giving any reason at all - just not for an unconstitutional reason, both sides have agreed. Asked if the city would take that step, Smith said "the verdict was just issued today, and we'll be considering all of our options." The jury deliberated for about seven hours over two days and voted unanimously. The jurors ruled in favor of the city on two points: the Scouts right to due process was not violated, and another First Amendment complaint by the scouts had no validity. Jury foreman Merrill Arbogast, 40, a truck driver from Lancaster County, said jurors discussed each of the legal points. "There was a lot of debate before we came to an agreement. . .we took each question and tried to break it down. "On some things we believed the city, on others we believed the Scouts," he said. The trial, which began June 14, was never about whether the Cradle of Liberty Council could discriminate. A landmark 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2000 said the Boy Scouts is a "membership organization" and can exclude gay youths and troop leaders. But the City Charter says otherwise, and after years of negotiations the city decided in 2006 that the Cradle Council's refusal to explicitly reject the national scout policy violated the charter. The scouts were ordered to vacate the 80-year-old headquarters they had occupied rent-free, or pay $200,000 a year to lease the building from the Fairmount Park Commission. It is one of two offices operated by the council, which also has Boy Scout troops in Delaware and Montgomery Counties. The scouts contended the city's move is an unconstitutional "coercion" that violates the organization's rights to free speech and equal protection. The city leases land to other institutions that have membership rules, including a Catholic church, and those groups do not face eviction, the scouts argued. The city called that comparison inaccurate, and the jury decided against the Scouts on that point. They did find that the city "would have permitted [the Scouts] to continue to use its headquarters building on a rent-free basis if [the Scouts] repudiated or renounced the policy of the Boy Scouts of America to gays?" They said yes, and added that position was "not reasonable." Those two answers combined were a finding of an "unconstitutional condition." During the trial, retired Cradle of Liberty CEO Bill Dwyer said he and other leaders realized "in our heart of hearts" that "we couldn't repudiate totally the national position. They would put us out of business." The local scouts cannot be forced to "repudiate a policy that the Supreme Court says is protected," Gosselin had said. David Smith, a lawyer for the city, told the jury that the city initially accepted the local group's statement that it opposed discrimination - until learning that the chapter used the national group's employment application, which barred hiring homosexuals, atheists and agnostics. Similar controversies have developed elsewhere in the nation since the high court ruling, prompting a variety of lawsuits with varied results. About 360 school districts and 4,500 schools in 10 states have terminated sponsorship of scout activities because of the scouts' stand on homosexuals, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. A negotiated solution here was reached briefly in 2003, when the scouts agreed not to discriminate against gays, but the Cradle Council rescinded that policy after the national council threatened to revoke its charter. In 2004, the Cradle Council agreed to oppose "any form of unlawful discrimination," but a year later then-City Solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr., said that clause was too vague. In 2007, City Council voted to evict the scouts. The Scouts can now ask the court to order the city to pay legal fees worth some $860,000.

Can it be actionable to be accused of something that one doesn't think is defamatory? Of course. Reputation is garnered by the opinions of other people, not by one's own opinion.

Ed writes: Well Merlyn, this was posted His Facebook issues and comments are not for publishing on a public forum as was this Yes, the article is a bit vague, but the boy has made public statements about being homosexual Guess what Ed? Neither of those statements reveal what kind of restrictions might be on his Facebook page. And because you disagree that this Scout has made his sexual orientation public doesn't make it a fact that he didn't. Remind me Ed, what, exactly, did he say or write in public? Oh, you don't know that, do you? What are you going to call me now, Merlyn? You're still an idiot, Ed.

Ed writes: Oh, you don't know the answer to either of these questions, do you? No I don't Merlyn and neither do you. I am basing my post on what I read in this thread just like you are. But I'm not the one making unwarranted assumptions; you are. For example, you keep assuming that everyone can read his Facebook page, even though it's possible to restrict that to just friends, or to customize it even further and restrict access to specific people, or to restrict access to specific postings. But you have steadfastly ignored this possibility.

We can assume anything we want, Merlyn. Sure, if you don't care anything about facts. If this young man didn't want people to know about his sexual orientation, why did he put it on Facebook? And what, exactly, did he write on his Facebook page? Why did he blab it all over the press. What, exactly, did he tell the press? Oh, you don't know the answer to either of these questions, do you? Go ahead, just make something up then, and "assume" it, and defame him some more if you like. I'll just assume you're an idiot. Heck, if this was someone stating the BSA is a religious organization on his Facebook page you would claim it's fact, Merlyn! No, I claim it's a fact when the BSA says so in official court documents and courts find that the BSA is, in fact, a religious organization.

NickP412 writes 2010: Also if its on the internet its in public domain. Wrong. If it's on the internet, it's likely written by someone in a country that is a signatory to the Berne convention (which is most of the world), and it's copyrighted by the author. It might be considered to be published, depending on how it's "on the internet".

Ed writes: What I mean, Merlyn, is your perspective on not having any facts regarding this Scout. Interesting. I was pointing out that you can't assume that something he posted on his Facebook wall is equivalent to stating it in public, since we don't know what kind of settings he has for his facebook page. But some people are improperly assuming that. Besides that, everything in this thread is just hearsay to anyone who has no direct experience in the matter, so strictly speaking we do NOT have any facts - just hearsay.

What are you talking about, Ed?

Like I said, it depends on what his facebook settings are; he could have it set so people not on his friends list can't see it.

he has made his sexual orientation a public issue. I disagree: He has announced it to his friends Telling your friends anything isn't a public issue, that's a private issue. I tell my friends things that I don't announce to the world. joined gay-pride organizations You don't have to be gay to join gay pride organizations. and discussed it openly on his Facebook wall. Which (depending on his privacy settings and/or what arbitrary global privacy settings Facebook has this week) may well only be visible to people he has acknowledged as friends, so again it wouldn't be a public announcement, it would be a private message limited to personal friends of his.

Sounds like there's exactly as much solid evidence that this Eagle scout is gay as there is for B-P then.

Stosh, you still haven't come up with anything he's done that's against any rule. Using your test analogy, suppose he asked around if it was against the rules to use a calculator for the test, and, not finding any rule against it, used one. You might think he "cheated", but if there's no rule against it, how has he cheated?

I was under the impression that people can't arbitrarily add (or subtract) requirements for getting Eagle. So until someone can come up with a written sexual orientation requirement, I'd say there isn't one.

How is he not Loyal? Is he expected to change his sexual orientation to be "loyal"? How is he not Trustworthy? As far as I can tell from the BSA's myriad unwritten rules, it's OK for a youth member to be gay. How is he not Brave? You think it's easy to come out as gay at his age?

I'm an atheist, bacchus. However, what I wrote wasn't anything like an ad hominem.

bacchus writes: I would personally have issues with sending my own boys to a camp or other activity where I don't know if the leaders have the same morals with which I have tried to raise them. I'd have issues with sending my boys to a camp where the leaders use nicknames taken from, say, the Roman god of intoxication.

The jury decided on April 13 that the Boy Scouts were negligent for allowing former assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes to associate with Scouts, including Lewis, after Dykes admitted to a Scouts official in 1983 that he had molested 17 boys. The BSA is on the hook for being criminally negligent.

A PDF of the 66 page ruling on the national day of prayer is here: http://ffrf.org/uploads/legal/SummaryJudgementGeitner.PDF

I'd rather keep weather satellites, GPS, Search & Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking, and the general benefit of verifying e.g. nuclear treaties and always seeing where countries are amassing troops. And I'd really like to know when (not if) a car-sized asteroid is calculated to hit the earth.