Scheer on Scout Decision

* Why does The Times insist on publishing the drivel of Robert Scheer? This man’s ideas are at the furthest-left fringe of the spectrum of American thought. “Tied Up in Knots Over Controversial Gay Case” (Commentary, July 4) takes the Boy Scouts to task for standing consistently behind a policy that is as old as the organization: nonacceptance of homosexuality. Scouting has fought homosexuality for all of my 60-some years and has had from its beginning the standard of training boys to be “straight,” choosing to emphasize the basic, traditional Judeo-Christian teachings, one of which is that homosexual behavior is a sin.

Scheer thinks a few old men have led the Scouts astray by fighting for (and winning) the right to exclude those who practice homosexuality, but it is Scheer and extreme liberals like him who are trying to change an accepted Scouting policy. Just because the world has lurched to the left in its acceptance of any and all behavioral standards, that is to say, no standards at all except those of “political correctness,” does not mean that every bastion of traditional Judeo-Christian morality must also change.

What is the agenda of The Times in representing Scheer’s views so prominently and frequently?

MICHAEL SMITH

Mission Viejo

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Has anyone else noted the real danger in the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding the Boy Scouts? It was clothed as a 1st Amendment freedom-of-association issue. But by accepting the Boy Scouts’ arguments for why they should be allowed to discriminate against gays, the Supreme Court, in effect, validated, legalized and put into legal precedent the Scouts’ definition of homosexuals as “unclean” and “immoral.”

TOM OGDEN

Hollywood

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I would like to reassure H.C. “Rex” Mugar (letter, July 4) that my son and the gay people I know are of good moral character, have good values, are clean, reverent, loyal, trustworthy, helpful and hard-working, taxpaying, participating citizens. It’s too bad the Scout leadership doesn’t realize this.

MARGY KLEINERMAN

Brea

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How can the Boy Scouts be considered a “private organization,” when every year an adult Scout member comes into my fifth-grade public school classroom to solicit membership in the Boy Scouts--but then excludes gays and atheists? This “private” group also teaches a “Learning for Life” program that I had in my class several years ago. During school time, children were requested to sign a Boy Scout pledge to affirm, among other things, their belief in God.

Private? Separation of church and state? Sounds like an exclusionary, religious club that uses public schools to promote its agenda.

WENDY AVERILL

Culver City