COMMENTARY: Boy Scouts Stand for God and Country, While Battling ACLU

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) I recently made it up to Camp Hahobas in Washington state to join my old Boy Scout troop for the closing campfire after Scouts there spent a week earning merit badges, learning to cook and playing “kick the can.” There was the old lake, the old playing field, the […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) I recently made it up to Camp Hahobas in Washington state to join my old Boy Scout troop for the closing campfire after Scouts there spent a week earning merit badges, learning to cook and playing “kick the can.” There was the old lake, the old playing field, the old canvas tents and the old Walla Lee campground. Old Glory was there, too.

Our nation’s flag took center stage at the closing campfire. Six troops from Western Washington joined in a massive retirement ceremony for a 24-foot tattered American flag. Scouts took turns cutting each huge stripe, folding it, and placing it into the center of the fire. When all was done and the thick smoke of the burning flag had gone heavenward, Camp Hahobas was silent. As a movement, every Scout lifted up his three-finger salute and joined in the Pledge of Allegiance.


That flag is the symbol of our nation. It heralds “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” And more than most organizations, the Boy Scouts understand what that means.

Both the flag and Scouts represent the real America. The flag celebrates liberty and justice, and the Boy Scouts of America teaches boys honor and self-government

That is why, in 1916, Congress granted the Boy Scouts a federal charter sealing the federal government’s alliance with Scouting for the cause of our national interest. The Boy Scouts have contributed more to the nation _ its communities, its future leaders and its sense of honor _ than any other youth organization.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the Boy Scouts are a private organization, that no body of government can coerce the Scouts to accept homosexuals in positions of leadership. The Scouts are private and autonomous over their membership standards, but they can still be involved in public activities, and the public sector can still interact with the Scouts.

In fact, the only way our nation can survive is if its character originates from the private realm rather than from the government. If government alone _ through the public schools, through laws, through overburdening regulations and programs designed to compensate for the inadequacies of private morality _ is the standard of character, both the character and the government of the nation shall fall.

That is why we need private organizations like the Boy Scouts to teach honor and self-government. It is also why government at all levels must encourage and support those private institutions that support it.

The American Civil Liberties Union abides by a different principle. The ACLU attacks the American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance for the same reasons it has relentlessly assaulted the Boy Scouts these past couple decades. Both the flag and the Scouts stand for God and country, for duty and service and freedom.


The ACLU occupies courthouses across the country to enforce its flawed interpretation of the First Amendment: that government is to be devoid of any influence from private organizations that adhere to the ideals that are as well articulated by the Scout Oath as by the Pledge of Allegiance.

A federal judge ruled in June, after an ACLU lawsuit, that the U.S. Department of Defense will be prohibited from sponsoring the Boy Scout Jamboree because government sponsorship amounts to discrimination against gays. The Senate intervened and voted 98-0 to continue sponsorship. But if Congress doesn’t do more to stop the ACLU’s out-of-control allies on the federal bench, the Boy Scouts will continue to be harassed and discriminated against.

MO/JL END RNS

(Hans Zeiger is an Eagle Scout and author of “Get Off My Honor: The Assault on the Boy Scouts of America.” A student at Hillsdale College in Michigan, he is a spokesman for the Scouting Legal Defense Fund.)

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a photo of Zeiger.

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