The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) officially considers self-expression of disbelief in a God as incompatible with Scouting. It has not been sufficient for nonbelieving members or prospective members to be respectful of other Scout's whose beliefs are contrary to theirs. Membership in BSA is a privilege and accordingly BSA, as a private organization, will always retain its right to revoke the membership of misbehaving Scouts and Scouters. Scouts or Scouters who make unwanted and persistent attacks on other people's beliefs or who proselytize while participating in Scouting or at Scouting events have no right to membership. It is unfair, however, to equate someone's self-expression of their own belief with disrespect for others who hold contrary beliefs. This common sense distinction appears to get lost when dealing with people who profess to not believe in the existence of a God.
The Boy Scouts of America recognizes that God plays an important role in the world view of many Americans and accordingly relies on this central belief in its method of promoting ethical character. No one is suggesting that BSA give up its endorsement of God or anything relating to Scouting or the role of Scouting in promoting good citizenship and positive values. BSA respects a wide diversity of inconsistent religious beliefs among its members. There is no need to make an exception for atheists.
Accommodating atheists requires little more than respecting the right of individual Scouts to disagree with the theistic beliefs of the majority. Nevertheless, in practice this is easier said than done. Religious diversity can be difficult, it can be a challenge, it can require effort to work. Many people regard theistic belief as a universal and fundamental truth, principle, ethic, and social necessity. BSA is taking the easy route of catering to the strong feelings of the sizable anti-intellectual conservative segment of its membership that refuses to even permit fair consideration of atheistic world views as having possible legitimacy. To uphold this closed-minded approach they seek to limit social exposure to decent neighbors who hold honest atheistic world views. The principled, ethical, and sensibly patriotic atheist remains hidden from mind and view, thereby keeping the false caricatures of atheists as nihilists, amoralists, anarchists, far-leftists, anti-American, irresponsible, unreliable, thugish, criminal, etc. unchallenged. The result is an insidious, self-perpetuating circle of negative caricature and discrimination.
People who claim that BSA's religious component is inseparable from BSA's aims or of equal importance to the aims are projecting their own religious beliefs into the argument and are therefore engaging in nothing more persuasive than circular reasoning, which no doubt is sincerely persuasive to them but still irrelevant to justifying a policy of penalizing nonbelievers for their nonbelief. If BSA were a sectarian organization then there would be no question regarding the propriety of BSA mandating specific religious expression as a requirement of membership. Instead, BSA wants to be a non-sectarian quasi- religious organization that can restrict membership on political-religious based criteria even though some of BSA's chartering partners could not legally enforce such political-religious restrictions directly. The legal ambiguities and conflicts that consequently arise are likely to provoke legal challenges which will regrettably be an additional budgetary expense for BSA. An organization that requires particular religious beliefs for participation is being sectarian with respect to those beliefs. Such an organization can insist that it is non-sectarian, as does BSA, but such insistence does not make it so.
Where the Boy Scouts of America errs is not its method, but in its turning this method into an excuse for presumptuously pre-excluding nonbelievers by insisting that the religious component cannot be modified as necessary for the purpose of accommodating the self-expression of the nonbelieving Scouts. The rationale for this inflexibility appears to be based on a claim that the mere open presence of nonbelievers in a Boy Scout unit would undermine the BSA's effectiveness. The implication is either 1) that nonbelief is incompatible with scouting, good citizenship or ethical character or 2) that believers must be protected from exposure to nonbelievers. It is a prejudgment not based on any measure of the nonbelieving boys' character even though the exclusion is defended as "upholding values", and this exclusion sends the wrong messages to the other members of the wider community regarding the proper treatment of those who do not adopt the prevailing religious beliefs orthodoxy. Nonbelievers enjoy and benefit from scouting as much as believers, and they participate and contribute to scouting in other countries without undermining the morale of their fellow Boy Scouts. Those who have been so denied membership and its privileges were not so denied for any evidence of a lack of commitment to Scouting's universal ideals.
Scouting is a social, educational and recreational activity. Partisan religious and political advocacy is not intrinsic to scouting. Nevertheless, BSA acts as an advocate for the partisan viewpoint that theism is indispensable to "the best kind of" citizenship and, according to their public relations spokespeople, good character for [i]everyone[\i]. These are parochial and presumptuous claims, overgerneralizations at best, disguised as universal principles that politicize religious beliefs and sectarianize political beliefs. More significantly, BSA tries to link this partisan viewpoint to Scouting, declaring that adopting this view is indispensable to Scouting and thereby effectively making adoption of this view requisite to participation. This is a particularly dubious claim, no less so for being popular by appealing to popular prejudices. This policy of singling out non-believers accrues added negative impact because it is done in the context of BSA's self-identification as a non-sectarian organization and because of government and public organization involvement with and support for BSA.
Every private organization has a right to be a political advocacy organization, including a scouting organization. BSA claims it is a private organization. A private organization's own rules are its own to make and to keep, and the primary responsibility for upholding an organization's own rules lies with that organization's executives and membership. This assumes that the private organization is not a place of public accommodation or acting as a third party interferer vis-a-vis a public institution that is prohibited from discriminating or otherwise receiving special privileges from government. Nevertheless, Americans should not be surprised when atheists continue to openly question the propriety of theistic belief mandates that exclude them from "private, non-sectarian" organizations for which they otherwise qualify.
BSA arguably has at least some of the characteristics of a public organization. BSA's Congressional Charter defines BSA as an educational organization teaching Scoutcraft. The Congressional Charter grants BSA exclusive use of its symbols and terminology. On this basis BSA successfully prevented a competing organization from also calling itself a "Scouting" organization (GSUSA has a similar Congressional charter thereby granting it rights to also use the word "Scout"). Furthermore, BSA charters some of its units to government and public institutions and to public and government related auxiliary organizations. Organizations that charter BSA units assume the rights and obligations of a BSA unit owner and operator, yet under the terms of the charter the BSA retains a veto over applicants for unit membership (this membership veto has been exercised by BSA for the purpose of enforcing adherence to theistic belief related mandates). Some BSA units, particularly those chartered to public schools and to parents and teachers organizations, utilize public school personnel or invite BSA leaders to recruit students during class time. Government money and personnel are used to prepare areas of military bases that may not normally accessible to the general public for large BSA events. Some BSA Councils have obtained unusual government assistance such as sky shows featuring military aircraft at fund raising events. Governments provide rent free offices and exclusive access to park land not available to other partisan or sectarian organizations.
BSA also engages in commercial activities such as selling uniforms, equipment, books, and Scouting paraphernalia. A significant amount of BSA's operational budget is funded by local United Ways and other organizations which claim to withold their support from organizations that do not meet a basic anti-discrimination standards. Like American society at large, these fund raising organizations refuse to acknowledge that monotheistic oath mandates are just as direct and insidious a form of discrimination as that which targets any other sincere, peaceful, and non-hateful belief, including the more popular beliefs that are protected by the very same anti-discrimination standards.
Even if these public associations are deemed to be insufficient to undermine BSA's claim to be a private organization, they should at a minimum be sufficient to make it illegal for government institutions to charter BSA units or provide direct and indirect subsidies. The Illinois Civil Liberties Union has successfully ended such government sponsorship of BSA units in Chicago and is attempting to end such sponsorship throughout Illinois. The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union is taking the same approach there. A school district in Oregon is the target of a lawsuit seeking to end recruitment for BSA by public schools. If this legal approach is successful, BSA will be left with a choice of either not chartering units to government institutions or of accommodating atheists in such units. The preferred outcome from our point of view would be for BSA units to continue to be sponsored by government institutions with an accommodation made for atheists. However, if BSA refuses to allow such accommodation, ending government sponsorship and subisidies is preferable to the status quo.
An acceptance of nonbelievers would not damage the Boy Scouts of America's well-earned good reputation with either the public at large or the church sponsors of Cub Scout packs and Boy Scout troops, except maybe in the minds of those who fear nonbelievers and/or nonbelief. This exagerated, nonrational, and misplaced fear is based in generations of scapegoating and misunderstanding that thrives in the ignorance promoted by ideological chuavanism, segregation and isolation. Instead of legitimizing and encouraging such prejudicial attitudes, however widespread, our country would be better served by a youth scouting organization that prepares our young people to take on their responsibilities as adults without biases nurtured and protected in artificially restricted experiences. We are cheating ourselves, both as individuals and as a nation, when we limit ours exposure to different ideas, perspectives, beliefs, etc. and thereby refuse the opportunity and challenge to consider and discuss those viewpoints fairly and honestly. By prejudging, stereotyping, and excluding we lose the basis for claims to quality and respectability.