I’m impressed by this, and I hope it ends well for all parties involved – which it could do with just one very simple change in policy.

Evidently, the Boy Scouts council in Southeastern Pennsylvania raised funds 80 years ago to build an office for their council – on public land. The city of Philadelphia agreed to charge them $1/year rent on the land so long as they maintained the building.

In recent years, however, there’s been a lot of government withdrawal away from BSA because of their anti-homosexual stance. They’ve been increasingly denied access or charged full price for access to public facilities, such as marinas, parks, etc.

And now Philadelphia wants them to either include gay and atheist boys in their mission, pay full market rent on the land, or relocate off of public property.

If BSA wants to make it a freedom of speech issue that they are a private organization and permitted to deny admission to anyone they please, the city of Philadelphia is well within its rights to deny to rent to an organization that violates city anti-discrimination law. I suppose, since the Boy Scouts council raised money and built the building, they could try and take it with them, but really – is it that hard just to become more inclusive?

I wish this had been the Philly I saw when I lived there for two years.

Tangentially, this quote comes from the Time article:

While some organizations and governments have been hostile to the Scouts, Bork said, many have been supportive. “We clearly had some issues with organizations that don’t respect the Scouts’ right as a private organization to set its own membership standards and have withdrawn their support,” Bork said. “But frankly that’s their right too, and we respect that.”

Let there be much “argh-ing” and gnashing of teeth. Talk about twisting words! Yo, Mr. Bork, let me clue you in on something – respecting the Scouts’ right as a private organization to set its own membership standards and AGREEING with those standards are two very different things. And while I respect your right to appear in national media to be a two-bit, ignorant sack of dung for twisting your own words to worst effect, in no way do I agree that this supports your cause.

From Time.com via Digg.