Deadline Looms For Philly Scouts

Philadelphia has given the Boy Scouts until December 3rd to rescind its policy of excluding gays or forfeit the right to continue renting its headquarters from the city for $1 a year, as the Scouts have done since 1928. Market rent on the massive Beaux Arts building, which was constructed by the Scouts themselves, is thought to be about $200,000 annually.

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts had the right to exclude homosexuals, just as they exclude atheists and agnostics as inconsistent with the values of the organization. Philadelphia's Cradle Of Liberty chapter of the Scouts, the third largest in the nation, sought in 2004 to break with that national policy, but were overruled. The chapter is considering a legal fight, but may wait until new mayor Michael Nutter takes office in January, in the hope that he may be agreeable to some compromise.