Editorial for May 29, 2008 edition:


Let’s hear it for the Boys

Michael Nutter is off to a very good start as leader of the City of Brotherly Love, with only a few exceptions, including one taking place this week. Call it the case of Nutter vs. Apple Pie.
Thanks to Mr. Nutter’s political correctness and apparent desire to pander to the radical left, the Boy Scouts of America, a group that represents millions of people who are about as American as fireworks on the 4th of July, mom and apple pie, is forced to literally make a federal case out of its right to remain one of the few things that are so crystal-clearly right about America.
Mr. Nutter says the BSA’s policy prohibiting known homosexuals from serving as Scouts or Scout leaders is "unconscionable," and he wants to evict the organization’s local chapter, the Cradle of Liberty Council, from its city-owned, rent-free headquarters downtown, at 22nd and Arch streets — a building in which the BSA has over the years invested millions of dollars in renovations.
The BSA inspires countless good deeds and trains millions of boys to be self-sufficient, decent, respectful and obedient. The BSA is not a group of monsters like the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Panthers.
Penalizing an organization of authentic do-gooders like the Boy Scouts of America for sticking to its principles and morals — a right that has been upheld by the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court — is dead wrong. Your stance is patently unfair and un-American, Mr. Mayor, and you know it.
Giving the BSA an ultimatum of renouncing its national organization’s court-approved right to preserve moral straightness in its membership or vacating its home is blackmail, Mr. Mayor. Shame on you. ••

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