Media Shove Boy Scout Story under a Tent

Let's pretend we're news editors at the TV networks and major newspapers.

This just in: The Boy Scouts of America have filed a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia for threatening to evict the Cradle of Liberty Council from their headquarters in a city park.

If the Scouts don't prevail, they face eviction from their 80-year-old building by Saturday, May 31.

Shouldn't this be a national news story? It's not.

None of the networks has mentioned the lawsuit, which was filed on May 23, and major newspapers have devoted as little as a couple of sentences to it based on wire reports.  The only significant coverage has been in the local Philadelphia [1] papers.  And none of them gives readers any inkling as to why the Scouts (and parents) might not want to put children at risk by permitting homosexual men to serve as Scoutmasters. 

In the wake of the homosexual pederasty scandal that is bankrupting the Catholic Church in many cities—including Philadelphia—the Scouts' position should be easy to understand and articulate.  The only media outlet running anything even close to giving the Scouts' point of view was the Philadelphia Inquirer, which ran an op-ed by Republican state Rep.Gib Armstrong [2] that takes city officials to task.  Still, even Armstrong bases his entire case on the good deeds the Scouts do, and delicately sums up the struggle this way: “The choice given the Scouts was an impossible one: accept a local policy they cannot abide by, or pay an escalated rent they cannot afford.”

The Scouts are fighting what amounts to an attempt at extortion.  Given that tens of millions of American men have been in the Boy Scouts and that this story brims with David and Goliath drama, why is it being ignored?

There are several reasons:

1)      The story reveals, in spades, that “tolerance” is not the real aim of the homosexual activists.  Their real desire is to force society, even institutions like the Scouts, to accept homosexuality, or destroy them if they won't knuckle under.

2)      It reflects badly on the Democratic Mayor Michael Nutter and the Democrat-dominated City Council, who agreed to the nasty “deal” offered to the Scouts.

3)      The bullying was instigated by openly homosexual city solicitor Romulo Diaz, Jr. His successor, Shelley Smith, has adopted Mr. Diaz's penchant for bullying, along with creative explanations: “We're not punishing them for not admitting homosexuals, but they can't get free rent and violate our (nondiscrimination) policy,” she was quoted in phillyburbs.com [3]. 

4)      It might drive a wedge between two liberal constituencies – wealthy homosexual donors and minority groups. A lot of the Scouts are inner city kids.

5)       It might wake people up to the fact that the Left is advancing its radical sexual agenda under cover while the media are fixated on reporting bad news about the economy, the war in Iraq, and anything they can dig up on the Bush Administration.

Recent surveys have shown that most Americans think that the fiscal and war issues will take precedence over social issues such as abortion and same-sex “marriage” in the upcoming presidential campaign. The media are delighted to report this, over and over.

The survey results are not surprising given that gas is $4 a gallon and that the media refuse to cover crucial cultural battles such as Philadelphia's attempt to stiff-arm the Boy Scouts.     

Let's recap and amplify:

--Big city bullies tell Boy Scouts they are about to lose their 80-year-old headquarters that they built themselves and deeded to the city in exchange for an annual $1 lease “in perpetuity.”

--The Scouts have until Saturday (May 31) to pay $200,000—or else.

--The Boy Scouts file a civil rights lawsuit.

Sounds like a story to me.

Robert Knight, an Eagle Scout and former news editor at the Los Angeles Times, directs the Culture and Media Institut [4]e, a division of the Media Research Center.