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Miami-Dade United Way Shows Boy Scouts The Door
by Fidel Ortega
365Gay.com Newscenter
Miami Bureau
May 15, 2003
12:17 a.m. ET/+5GMT/-3PT
(Miami, Florida) The United Way of Miami-Dade has pulled its funding of the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America for failing to abide by an agreement requiring it to help gay youth.
United Way grants to the group amounted to $480,000.
Following the 2000 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Boy Scouts of America to bar gays from serving as troop leaders the Miami-Dade United Way threatened to stop giving money to the scouts. In July 2001 a six-point agreement was reached between the United Way and the South Florida Boy Scouts Council.
That agreement required scout leaders to undergo ''diversity training.'' The training was to be crafted with the help of Project YES, a Miami group devoted to the needs of gay youth. It also required the scouts to refer youths who were questioning their sexuality to gay youth counseling groups in the Miami area.
But, the Dallas, Texas headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America prevented the agreement from being implemented.
This week the United Way said it considered the agreement void and the funding suspended.
''The signals constantly were that the national organization was not happy with this agreement,'' said Harve Mogul, United Way of Miami-Dade's president and CEO.
Jeff Herrmann, scout executive for the South Florida Council of the Boy Scouts said that the group has its own diversity training, but balked at the particulars in the agreement.
[Yeah we know what kind of diversity training the scouts have: gays and non-christians are evil and immoral.]
"We will not engage in lifestyle training. That's not in agreement with scout oath and law," Herrmann said. Specifically he was concerned about the provision that it refer gay and questioning youth in its program to gay service organizations.
Herrmann said the organization's policy remains to tell the parents of gay youths about any concerns about their sexual orientation, in essence outing them to their parents. Herrmann said the parents can consult their clergy or spiritual advisors.
Gay rights group SAVE Dade, which helped write the original agreement said the Scouts policy is devastating to gay youths, who have a higher-than-average suicide rate. They say scout leaders should be aware of counseling alternatives.
The United Way of Miami-Dade was a major funding source for the South Florida Council, which runs scouting programs in Miami-Dade, Monroe and Broward counties. The Broward United Way suspended its funding in 2001.
More than 50 United Way affiliates, including those in Orlando, Seattle and San Francisco -- have terminated their funding in recent years, costing the organization millions of dollars. Some of that lost funding has been offset by ''designated giving,'' as United Way donors are still entitled to direct contributions to specific programs, the Boy Scouts among them.
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