the other side of the coin

[DanKroh]

Well, since we've had, by my count, four threads so far with articles condemning the Philadelphia City Council, I thought it would be nice to throw one in that shows the other side of the coin. Just to be fair and balanced.

 

A bit heavy on the sarcasm and overly harsh for my tastes, but the writer does bring up some valid points.

 

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15169030.htm

 

Ronnie Polaneczky | Boy Scouts in a jam - this calls for a merit badge!

 

I THINK THE Boy Scout's Cradle of Liberty Council needs a new merit badge: the Weasel Badge!

 

It would be awarded to Scouts who act in opposition to admirable qualities, like honor, that the Council tries to instill in its 64,000 local members.

 

For guidance, Scouts can look at the Cradle's actions regarding its potential eviction from the city-owned property it occupies, rent-free, at 22nd and Winter.

 

What would they observe?

 

Caginess!

 

The Cradle non-discrimination statement says that the group is opposed to "any form of unlawful discrimination."

 

Sounds honorable, right?

 

But what the statement is really saying is that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Scouts, as a private organization, have the right to discriminate against whomever they want, just as other private organizations do.

 

So it's the Cradle's right to forbid gays from holding leadership positions in the organization.

 

The statement is so well-worded, it actually makes the Cradle's anti-gay policy sound noble.

 

If that's not Weasel-like behavior, I ask you, what is?

 

Backpedaling!

 

Hold on, says Liberty spokesman Larry Ceisler: The Cradle's non-discrimination statement is worded exactly as the city demanded it be, back in 2004, when both sides were debating how the Cradle could stay at 22nd and Winter rent-free, without it looking like the city supported an anti-gay stance.

 

But along came new city solicitor Romy Diaz, who said the policy wording was wrong, because the city can't subsidize "lawful" discrimination any more than it can "unlawful" discrimination.

 

So the Cradle, he said, either has to pay fair-market rent, change its policy language or move out of the building altogether - which was the city's original demand in 2003, when this issue first arose.

 

"This is an outrageous reversal!" Cradle rockers are crying.

 

But they forget that the Cradle itself backpedaled in 2003, when it opposed the national Scouts' anti-gay stance - then reversed itself when the Scouts threatened to revoke the Cradle's charter and replace its board.

 

To be a Weasel is to decry all backpedaling but your own.

 

Obfuscation and Hysteria!

 

To distract us from its lawful right to discriminate, the Cradle has actually linked its rent rant to - get this - murdered kids.

 

"With an epidemic of gun violence taking the lives of Philadelphia children every day," Liberty's other spokesman, Jeff Jubelirer, told the Inquirer, "it is ironic the administration chose this time to destroy programming that services 40,000 children in the city."

 

That's quite a charge. So I asked Jubelirer, how much rent does the city want?

 

He couldn't say.

 

Nor could he say what it might cost the Cradle to rent comparable square footage elsewhere.

 

Nor, for that matter, could he say which programs would be "destroyed" by charging rent.

 

Unless the Cradle knows for sure, it seems pretty cynical - and Weasel-like - to link murdered kids to a rent squabble.

 

Buck-passing!

 

Most Weasel-ish about the Cradle's stance is how it demands that the city keep the Scouts' national discrimination policy from having ill effects on local Scouting - instead of forcing Scouting to suffer the consequences of its own behavior.

 

Yesterday, Ceisler told me, "For the city to evict the Cradle from 22nd and Winter would send a terrible message - it would say the city doesn't want Scouts in Philadelphia."

 

Actually, it would say that the city has embraced principal - albeit clumsily and tardily - in a way the Cradle couldn't.

 

To muddy that fact, well, it's kind of weasly.

[fgoodwin]

Dan, its worth noting that CoL's gyrations would not have been necessary had the City lived up to its earlier commitment to allow the Scouts rent-free occupancy of the property "in perpetuity".

 

So, who is really "weaseling" here?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Fred, you seem to be as ineducable as Ed. "in perpetuity" only means the lease doesn't need to be renewed. The Philly lease, according to news reports, says that the city can terminate the lease by giving the BSA one year's notice.

 

If the lease explicitly says that it can be terminated that way, your argument boils down to ignoring part of the lease, while at the same time you're complaining that part of the lease is being ignored.

 

Neither part is being ignored:

"in perpetuity" means the lease doesn't need to be periodically renewed;

an explicit clause on how to end the lease, ends the lease if it is exercised.(This message has been edited by Merlyn_LeRoy)

[DanKroh]

Fred, perhaps back in 1928, the city did not anticipate that the local council would be forced by the national organization to continue a discrimination policy found to be unethical by so many members of not only the local council (who voted UNANIMOUSLY in 2003 to buck the national policy) but also by the local populace in general?

 

If anything, perhaps the BSA changed the rules when they went explicit with their formal denouncement of homosexuals in the 1980's.

[Hunt]

"Fred, perhaps back in 1928, the city did not anticipate that the local council would be forced by the national organization to continue a discrimination policy found to be unethical by so many members of not only the local council (who voted UNANIMOUSLY in 2003 to buck the national policy) but also by the local populace in general?"

 

Well, I suspect that if you could go back in time and talk to the city fathers in 1928, they would have been horrified at the suggestion that the Boy Scouts would ever allow atheists or homosexuals to be members or leaders. I don't think they would have anticipated that later city leaders would invalidate the lease for this reason.

 

Has anybody seen the actual lease language? My understanding is that it was leased to BSA for as long as the property was used for scouting purposes. But really, unless we see that actual lease language, it's hard to judge whether it really helps one side or the other in the dispute.

[MarkS]

I've read that the council spent $2.6 million on renovations to the building in the mid-'90s and $60,000 a year for maintenance and upkeep of the property. I wonder if the dispute would be resolved if they stayed in the building and paid fair market rent while the city paid $60,000 a year for maintenance and upkeep of the property. What is fair market rent? Could they move and pay less than $60,000 a year elsewhere?

 

Point is, the "free rent" doesn't really sound like a bargain, but I'm missing info on what the city wants to charge for rent of the building.

[DanKroh]

Hunt, sorry, but I thought I was clear that it is in the present day that so many consider the policy unethical, not in 1928. Society changes, and there are many things that would have horrified 1928 society that are considered perfectly acceptable now. And on the flip side, many things considered part of "polite society" in 1928 would horrify people today.

 

The city's policies have changed to include non-discrimination policies that reflect the will of its citizens. That the BSA can't abide by those policies could not have been anticipated by the city fathers in 1928.

[jmenand]

I can't honestly say I know what is rattling around in the heads of the top brass in the BSA, but the optimist in me requires that I look for the good intentions in what the BSA does. For example, I have to assume that the ban on homosexuals at least partially comes from the supposedly "logical" train of thought that male adults who are attracted to men rather than women, will thus be more likely to molest boys than straight men.

 

We have to ask ourselves: when push was coming to shove back in the highly politicized environment of the meetings to decide the way to word the policy that bans homosexuals, what forces lead to banning "homosexuals" rather than, for example, simply "molesters, perverts, and anyone attracted to children?"

 

I mean, if they were going to ban people with certain sexual urges, it seems much more appropriate to ban those who are sexually attracted to children... or more specifically boys. With middle school boys getting their middle aged teachers pregnant, the homosexual ban fails to screen those female leaders with immoral intentions.

 

And what of the word "avowed"? Talk about a squishy word! I picture the heads of the BSA and their many lawyers spending sleepless nights around a conference table, asking, "What word can we put in this policy that sounds assured, but is in truth arbitrary and malleable?"

 

I picture a similar discussion taking place years ago around a table of community leaders of Salem, just before their first witch hunt.

 

That darn word, "avowed..."

 

But I digress.

 

The bottom line is that these are the elected leaders of the people of the city. They are, through those democratic votes, the voices of the majority for better or worse. If they want to put pressure on the scouts, whether for political publicity and distraction from the city's real problems or for their honest moral beliefs, then pressure will be applied.

 

The scouts will just have to deal with it, and to that degree I agree with the above article. They should stop the political publicity stunts of "he said, she said," and just DEAL with it, and move on.

 

[evmori]

Fred, you seem to be as ineducable as Ed. "in perpetuity" only means the lease doesn't need to be renewed. The Philly lease, according to news reports, says that the city can terminate the lease by giving the BSA one year's notice.

 

Not to worry Fred. Merlyn loves to spin like a top.

 

"In perpetuity" means forever. Of course the lease doesn't need to be renewed. It never expires. If the news reports are accurate, then the lease isn't "in perpetuity."

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Well Ed, if you're right, the cradle of liberty council has nothing to worry about, right?

[fgoodwin]

Ed, my point in responding to Dan was: who changed?

 

I posit it's not BSA that changed.

 

Philadelphia unilaterally changed the terms of the "perpetual" agreement, not BSA.

[DanKroh]

Well, Fred, whether or not the BSA changed is up for debate. They set out an explicit policy of discrimination a couple of decades ago. Before that, they claim, such an explicit statement wasn't needed. But that IS a change.

 

But for the sake of argument, let's say the BSA hasn't changed. Nope, indeed, they haven't changed at all, despite the fact that the society around them has. And in Philadelphia, that society has said, discrimination against gays is unacceptable. But nope, the BSA doesn't change.

 

And if I'm reading the news sources correctly, Philly didn't change the terms of the lease. The terms were always that they could cancel the lease with a one year notice. Which is what they are doing.

 

I agree that it would be very interesting to see the exact wording of the lease, to see if there is any outline of the terms under which the city can cancel the lease (like, oh, say, not complying with city policies), or if they don't have to give any reason at all, as long as they give the one year notice.

 

While "in perpetuity" may mean forever in the veracular, such terms often have much more specific, even different, meanings in legalese. If the scouts accepted a lease that said "in perpetuity" expecting that to mean forever, despite the inclusion of a clause of how to cancel the lease, then they should have been more careful about reading the "fine print".

[fgoodwin]

Dan, IANAL, and I don't pretend to be one, altho others might -- but "in perpetuity" means "forever" in more than just the vernacular. From law.com:

 

in perpetuity

adj. forever, as in one's right to keep the profits from the land in perpetuity.

 

And as long as we're citing media reports, I've read that the City has similar leases with other non-profit and / or religious organizations, some of whom may legally discriminate in a manner similar to the BSA. If the City targets BSA, to the exclusion of those other agencies, it may run afoul of its own discrimination problems.

 

As I said before, we'll have to let the lawyers and the courts sort this one out.

[DanKroh]

Well, I agree that there is a problem is the city is offering $1/year leases to other private groups that practice discrimination. Those groups should also pay fair market rate or be evicted.

 

It is not clear to me from the news articles; it says the city leases space to other groups that discriminate. It doesn't say if those groups pay fair market rate or $1/year.

[GernBlansten]

The city should be even handed in reviewing its leases with other discriminatory groups. If they oust the BSA, then every group should face the same ultimatum. Now, do you think there will be any blow-back from those groups against the BSA for getting everyone in this pickle?