Here in my hometown of San Diego, there’s been a long time effort to remove the Boy Scout Camp from Balboa Park. This is being spearheaded by the ACLU — the long running court case to eject the Boys Scouts from Balboa Park is regarding the Boy Scouts official policy of discriminating against atheist, non-theist, and LGBT leaders, parents, and children, and how these policies regarding religious creed violate state and federal law, as well as how these policies based on sexual orientation and gender identity violate state law. Essentially, the City of San Diego is, and has been subsidizing discrimination by the Boy Scouts on public parkland with below market lease rates. San Diego is no longer defending the below market leases in the ongoing court cases, so it’s only the Boy Scouts at this point that are arguing that they should be allowed to discriminate against leaders, parents, and children because of their religious creed, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity.

As ACLU volunteer attorney Matt Stephens described the situation back in 2004:

The Boy Scouts cannot have it both ways. Having gone to great lengths to establish that discrimination against gays and non-believers is essential to their mission, and therefore protected by the First Amendment, they cannot now turn around and ask the people of San Diego to foot the bill for that discrimination.

The 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals has mad a ruling regarding in the past week regarding Barnes-Wallace v. Boy Scouts of America. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

The state Supreme Court, after a nearly two-year delay, will be asked to determine whether city of San Diego leases of Balboa Park land violate the state constitution’s ban on government preference for religious groups.
The move Wednesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hearing a lawsuit challenging the leases, is the latest turn in the long-running case.

…The case focuses on a 2003 ruling by U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones in San Diego. Jones struck down two leases that the city had with the Scouts for 16 acres in Balboa Park and on Fiesta Island. Jones concluded the Boy Scouts, which bars openly gay leaders and requires members to take an oath to God, is a religious organization and the leases amounted to government assistance to religion.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a lesbian couple and an agnostic couple. The Scouts appealed, and in December 2006, the federal appeals court said it wanted the state Supreme Court first to weigh in on three questions of state law: Do the leases amount to aid to religion; if so, does that aid support a sectarian purpose; and do the leases violate the state constitution’s “no preference” ban on government favoring a religious group.

Federal courts on occasion will ask state high courts to issue opinions on unique questions of state law that arise in cases before federal judges.

Back in December of 2006, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Barnes-Wallace v. Boy Scouts of America, according to a December, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle article, that:

[Below the fold, some history of Barnes-Wallace v. Boy Scouts of America.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Here we go: What I’ve been reading online today, paired with an open thread to discuss these articles, or stuff you find interesting.

- Marriage rights celebration, ‘D-List’ celeb among celebration’s highlights. Excerpt:

After 34 years of celebrating diversity and rights for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community in San Diego, the local organization Pride San Diego is reaping the rewards of activism and education.

Comment: I’m volunteering at the Transgender/TASC booth on Saturday, and the Scouting For All booth on Sunday.

The Scouting For All booth is extremely important to me. I have an Eagle Scout son, and I two other sons in scouting. If it were known that my two sons who are still in the Boy Scouts had a transgender parent, in accordance with how the Boy Scouts Of America’s national policy is applied, my sons would be kicked out of scouting. For me, protesting against the Boy Scouts has a lot to do with them discriminating against youth because of how their parents identify their sexuality or gender identity.

- DiversityInc: Jena 6 Aftermath: Nooses Punishable By Prison. Excerpt:

Nine months after the nation began witnessing an uptick in the number of reported noose sightings following the furor over the Jena 6 incident in Louisiana, lawmakers there, as well as in Connecticut and New York, have made hanging a noose a crime punishable by imprisonment. And more states are likely to follow.

Since September of last year, the number of reported noose incidents nationally jumped to nearly 80, according to the DiversityInc Noose Watch, the first and only tracker of national reported noose sightings.

- San Francisco Chronicle: 24% of state high-schoolers likely to drop out. Excerpt:

Nearly 1 in 4 California students will drop out during high school, state educators said Wednesday, basing their prediction on what they said is the most accurate information about student attendance they’ve ever collected.

Using a new student-tracking system, state educators found that 127,292 high school students in ninth through 12th grade quit school during the 2006-07 school year. That means 24 percent of incoming freshmen won’t stay in school long enough to graduate, researchers said, assuming that pace remains steady.

…The new dropout rate is far higher than the 13 percent educators had earlier estimated using less-sophisticated counting methods they had relied on for years.

Comment: I wonder what the graduation and dropout rates are for LGBT youth — I did a quick look this morning, and couldn’t find any statistics on the subject. I’m sure they’re out there, but I’m not sure where to look for the stats.

- MSNBC: Gore pitches 10-year shift to clean energy; Former VP praises Obama, McCain on climate issue, sees huge opportunity. Excerpt:

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other climate-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

- Bay Windows: A novel defense: Convict’s bid for retrial hinges on alleged anti-trans discrimination against potential juror. Excerpt:

At first glance the murder trial of Roxbury gang member Sam Smith, known as “Fat Sam” according to press reports, seems to have little to do with transgender civil rights. In June 2001 a jury convicted Smith of first-degree murder for shooting and killing a member of a rival gang in Roxbury’s Ramsey Park in 1991. But Smith and his attorney, David Mirsky, are hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will force the state to grant Smith a retrial on the grounds that one of the prosecutors in the case allegedly dismissed a juror because the juror appeared to be transgender.

- Los Angeles Times: Blue Shield sued for allegedly lying about its coverage; L.A. city attorney’s suit contends Blue Shield of California has illegally rescinded the coverage of more than 850 policyholders since 2002.

Comment: * sigh *

- The Lesbian & Gay Foundation (UK): Open meeting held for gay community and local police. Excerpt:

On Monday July 28, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community will have an opportunity to meet representatives from Merseyside Police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to discuss homophobia and hate crime.

The meeting, organised by the Police, the CPS, Terrence Higgins Trust, Wirral LGBT forum and Trans Wirral will be held from 6.30 -8.30pm at The Lauries Centre in Birkenhead.

The open meeting, ‘Merseyside Police and Hate Crime response’ allows members of the LGBT community to meet directly with representatives of Merseyside Police and the CPS to address concerns around homophobic and transphobic incidents and other safety concerns. Homophobic incidents and attacks are often under reported and this meeting will provide a forum for open and honest dialogue.

Comment: I hope this clears some air, but my guess is that bad feelings from the incident that precipitated this meeting are going to linger for awhile.

And not from what Olivia St. John is concerned about, as I see it. A resident WorldNetDaily gadfly (to use a relatively polite term), St. John is at it once again this morning (“Homosex in a public park near you“) over “the homosexual agenda,” longtime staple fare at WND …

But in the midst of all this, the reality is that children are at serious risk as the homosexual agenda proliferates in our nation’s public schools and continues invading our public space. The homosexual movement does not view moral people as friends, but our children are strongly desired, and they represent a hub around which the homosexual movement spins.

…

Those influenced by the “rulers of the darkness of this world” are doing their best to “call evil good and good evil” by using the public airwaves, public parks and public schools to push deviant sexual practices into the faces of our innocent children.

An entire generation is at risk.

Talk about fiddlin’ while Rome burns, I wish the Ms. St. Johns out there paid more attention to what the “rulers of the darkness” are leaving for future generations — 4,000 down and a helluva payback. Yup, nevermind death and taxes, let’s worry about “transsexual sex in public parks.” Sheesh …

Question 3: How many non-Jewish civilians were murdered during World War II?

Answer: While it is impossible to ascertain the exact number, the recognized figure is approximately 5,000,000. Among the groups which the Nazis and their collaborators murdered and persecuted were: Gypsies, Serbs, Polish intelligentsia, resistance fighters from all the nations, German opponents of Nazism, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, habitual criminals, and the “anti-social,” e.g. beggars, vagrants, and hawkers.
–Jewish Virtual Library

No kidding, James Hartline’s latest piece on his blog is Gay Activists Take A Page Out Of Hitler’s Mein Kampf To Evict Boy Scouts From Philadelphia Headquarters . Obviously, Hartline either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that gay men were among those who the Nazi’s killed, and that Hartline himself would have been imprisoned in a concentration camp — and possibly gassed — in his youth for being a homosexual and a habitual criminal.

Sub-topics in his latest piece include The Swastika – Rainbow Flag Connection, and California – Schwarzengger [sic] – The Nazi Connection — where he states…

The disasterous [sic] pro-homosexual laws currently being implemented in California could just as easily have been written in Hitler’s Germany. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a history of close ties to those involved in Nazism. In fact, Schwarznegger’s father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, was a volunteer member of the Sturmabteilung, or SA — the notorious Nazi storm troopers also known as brownshirts.

Right — Teh Gays, as part of the homosexual agenda are planning a new Holocaust to get rid of all the heterosexuals(!) — well, Teh Gays in an evil cabal with Gov. Schwarzenegger, that is. (*eyes roll*)

Harline’s over-the top comparison between LGBT people and Nazis is just insincere and deceitful — seriously, even Hartline in his deepest moments of insanity can’t honestly believe gays are mass murderers like Hitler.

Jon Stewart pretty much summed it up on his show in 2005 (Someone disagrees with you? Compare ‘em to a Nazi. Works like a charm. A Hitler charm):

And the Hitlers keep on coming. Yes, Adolf Hitler, one of the worst mass-murders in all of history, has become the go-to metaphor and comparison for anyone you have a minor disagreement with.

…Here’s my point. When you compare people to Hitler, enh, you loseWeight Exercise a little credibility.

…[P]lease stop calling people Hitler when you disagree with them. It demeans you, it demeans your opponent, and to be honest, it demeans Hitler. That guy worked too many years, too hard, to be that evil to have any Tom, Dick and Harry come along and say “Hey, you’re being Hitler.” No–You know who was Hitler? HITLER!

And of course — there’s the correlative to Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies, which The Economist reworded as…

“[A] good rule in most discussions is that the first person to call the other a Nazi automatically loseWeight Exercises the argument.”

Mr. Hartline’s Nazi/Hitler references would pretty much not be worth mentioning, except James Hartline seriously wants to be my City Councilman here in San Diego New Sodom. That there are some people have given him money, and consider him a candidate worth supporting — well, incredible just isn’t a strong enough word.

~~~~~
Related:
* James Hartline’s steep slide into insanity
* James Hartline: San Diego is on fire because of the homos
* Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline
* Writing Like James Hartline 101

Philadelphia has laws and policies against discrimination — specifically, Fair Practices Ordinance. This ordinance includes protections for LGB people and non-theists.

Well, officials for the Cradle of Liberty Council have said they can’t renounce the Boy Scouts’ policy of not allowing atheists or openly LGB parents, leaders, or scouts without violating their charter with the Boy Scouts’ National Council.

And, if they want to keep their headquarters at their same location it is now, it will cost the local council $199,999.00 a year. Here’s the story:

The Boy Scouts of America’s refusal to bend its rules to permit gay scouts will cost the organization’s local chapter $200,000 a year if it wishes to keep its headquarters in a city-owned building on Logan Square.

Representatives of the Boy Scouts of America’s Cradle of Liberty Council were notified that to remain in their 79-year-old landmark headquarters, they needed to pay the city a “fair market” rent, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said Wednesday. Currently, the rent is $1 a year.

The city decided on the rent proposal after it was unable to reach a compromise with the local scout council in talks that have gone on since May.

“Once we know what the Cradle of Liberty Boy Scouts want to do, we’ll probably want to weigh in with the city about how to proceed,” Nix told the park commission.

Barring a resolution, the Cradle of Liberty Council – about 64,000 scouts in Philadelphia and parts of Delaware and Montgomery Counties – must vacate the property at 22d and Winter Streets after May 31.

Anti-gay and anti-non-theist Boy Scout apologists aren’t likely pleased. I’m sure we’ll see reactions that highlight their belief this decision indicates Philadelphia’a “total intolerance for Christian beliefs and values” in some numbers soon.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
–Martin Luther King Jr.

That’s the slogan for Scouting For All. Due to being ill with Whooping Cough, I missed the last Sunday’s yearly Scouting For All rally at San Diego’s Balboa Park.

Annually, Scouting For All‘s San Diego chapter rallies to encourage the Boy Scouts to either stop discriminating against LGBT and non-theist children, leaders, and parents, or get their camp out of Balboa Park.

One of the speakers this year was former Eagle Scout Brenda Watson. She’s transgender. I say former Eagle Scout because she turned in her badge last year — she’ll reclaim her Eagle Scout title when the Boy Scouts stop discriminating. She was a transgender speaker in a group of gay, lesbian, transgender, and atheist speakers; people coming together to fight discrimination and injustice as a cohesive group.

The Gay & Lesbian Times will likely cover the event in their Thursday edition, but I haven’t been able to read up on what happened at the event online to this point — no mainstream news organization published a story on the event. With no new legal news coming out of the California Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently, and so much of the discussion within the LGBT community these days being about a fully inclusive ENDA, I don’t imagine that the Scouting For All rally will rate much of a story even within the local LGBT press.

Talk these days within our broad LGBT community is mostly about ENDA, yet other forms of LGBT discrimination occur and need our attention too. I hate the that the transgender inclusive/exclusive ENDA discussion has eclipsed pretty much all other important anti-discrimination issues.

In the Seattle Times‘ article Brothers force Scouts to reveal scope of abuse, two adults who were abused as children by a Boy Scout Leader obtained from the Boy Scouts its entire archive on sexually abusive Scout leaders.

The numbers (emphasis added):

…the Boy Scouts have ejected at least 5,100 adult leaders nationwide for sexual abuse allegations since 1946. And the files reveal that despite efforts to keep potential abusers from joining, the problems persist: In the past 15 years alone, the organization has kicked out leaders for such allegations at a rate of once every other day.

The 45 boxes of files are not public because of a strict court order that prohibits the Stewarts and their lawyers from disclosing specific cases. But a statistical summary of the files, provided by the Stewarts’ attorneys, shows the problem is larger than previously known.

But here is the really disconcerting part:

The secrecy of the files has also meant that the Boy Scouts have kept them from their own sex-abuse advisers, a group of respected experts first convened in the late 1980s to help craft a youth-protection program.

During the past 15 years, the group repeatedly suggested that the Boy Scouts study the files to see whether their prevention measures were working, said one adviser, David Finkelhor, who heads the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. But the Scouts’ lawyers rebuffed the recommendation, Finkelhor said.

Pretty damn scary bit of info, if you ask me. It’s reminiscent of how the Catholic Church has handled their priest abuse scandals.

~~~~~
Related:
* Boy Scout director: child porn creep
* Young winger: lefties get your hands off of my Boy Scouts
* Boy Scout Discrimination Back In The News
* Atlanta Boy Scouts inflated black scout numbers for $$
* Philly city council votes to terminate rent-free deal for Boy Scouts

In my hometown of San Diego there has a long running court case with the Boy Scouts of America regarding discrimination against LGBT and atheist people over its lease of a camp in the city’s Balboa Park.

Apparently, the City of Philadelphia has similar concerns about the Boy Scouts of America Cradle of Liberty headquarters.  The Boy Scouts there are getting a below market lease for the property it’s regional headquarters — located on City Property — in violation of Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination laws. That may change really, really, soon.  Per the Philadelphia Enquirer, Philadelphia last week in a surprise move voted to end it’s below market lease with the Boy Scouts:

The long-simmering dispute over whether the Boy Scouts of America’s Cradle of Liberty Council must publicly affirm it will not discriminate against openly gay people – or pay fair-market rent for the city-owned Logan Square land on which their landmark headquarters is located – boiled over anew yesterday as City Council authorized the city to end the lease.

The resolution was introduced unexpectedly by Councilman Darrell L. Clarke and passed, 16-1, with no debate and with Council Minority Leader Brian J. O’Neill voting no.

Both Clarke, a Center City Democrat whose district includes the building at 22d and Winter Streets, and City Solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr. said they hoped the resolution would spur talks to resolve the dispute so Cradle of Liberty Council could continue to use at nominal rent the Beaux Arts building it has been in since 1928.

“My hope is that the resolution will give a little more leverage to the city and that [the parties] can come up with some kind of compromise,” Clarke said. “Honestly, no one wants to see them out of there.”

Diaz said the Council vote was the last step required to end the lease under the 1928 ordinance that leased the land to the scouts “in perpetuity.”

Diaz said the scouts had to have a year’s notice and the administration’s recommendation had to be ratified by the Fairmount Park Commission and City Council.

“The year’s-notice clock is ticking,” Diaz said.

As Bayard Rustin said:

Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That’s our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.

It looks like Philadelphia has taken a pretty significant step to stop the public’s pretty significant subsidy (in the form of a below market lease) of the Boy Scouts of America — an organization that has publicly manifested anti-gay, anti-trans, and anti-atheist sentiments in their membership polices. Per Bayard Rustin, this is what we should hope will happen everywhere by our hard work lobbying our politicians.

As an LGBT citizen and taxpayer, I’m very pleased to see Philadelphia is doing the right thing by its LGBT and atheist citizens in starting the process to end the lease.

Here’s one from the Macon Telegraph (Georgia) entiltled Knowledge of laws regarding transsexuals can be helpful:

Transsexualism is one of the more emotionally charged, convoluted areas of the law of sex discrimination. You might think it’s not your problem, but you’d be wrong.

Several employers in Middle Georgia already have confronted workplace issues involving transsexuals. A quick review of recent cases can help your business be prepared in the event you face this issue, too.

Recently, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the highest federal court in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, acknowledged that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects transsexuals from discrimination on the basis of sexual identity. In the case, an employer fired a transsexual for being rude and unprofessional to customers and co-workers.

The transsexual alleged that she was discharged because of her sexual identity. The case was ultimately decided for the employer, but in the process the court acknowledged that Title VII protects transsexuals from discrimination. An employer in the Sixth Circuit cannot discriminate against a man who dresses or acts like a woman or who otherwise fails to act in accordance with society’s perception of his/her proper gender role.

A second recent case involved a transsexual police officer who alleged that he was not promoted to sergeant because his superiors considered him not “masculine” enough. The officer was employed as a law enforcement officer for 17 years and ranked 18th out of 105 officers who took the sergeant’s exam.

He was promoted, subject to a six-month probationary period, but then he was told that he was “not masculine enough” and lacked “command presence.” His superiors imposed training requirements that no other probationary candidate for sergeant had to comply with, including daily performance evaluations. The officer was the only one who failed to complete a promotion probationary period between 1993 and 2000.

Events leading to the lawsuit included the officer dressing as a male at work and as a female while off duty, taking female hormones in preparation for a sex change surgery and coming to work wearing makeup, nail polish and arched eyebrows.

So how did the case turn out? The officer won $874,236 at trial. The United States Supreme Court declined to review the case.

Another federal judge recently refused to dismiss a sex discrimination suit of a transsexual who was terminated as a pharmaceutical sales representative following his public cross-dressing and announcement of plans to have a sex change. The case is still pending.

One new report indicates that more that 86 percent of the country’s largest corporations now prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Presumably, this includes transsexualism. (more at link.)

Actually, that last line is incorrect — sexual orientation (i.e. gays, lesbians, etc) and gender identity and expression (i.e. transsexuals, genderqueers, cross-dressers etc.) are separate civil rights issues. The HRC’s report, entitled Corporate Equality Index 2006, has information on this.

Cross-posted from a Pam’s House Blend diary entry:
——

San Diego’s Boy Scout camp is in the news again. For those not aware, in 2003 U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones Jr. ruled that the Boy Scouts’ below market lease of public parkland (one-dollar a year at the time of the lawsuit) in Balboa Park (the “Central Park of San Diego“) violates the Constitution. Specifically, it’s one of those “separation of church and state” things.ACLU volunteer attorney Matt Stephens said in 2004: