New Orleans synagogue, Boy Scouts part ways over Scouting's ...

For nearly a decade, hundreds of New Orleans-area Boy Scouts have learned the virtues of the Ten Commandments on an annual Thanksgiving holiday hike to Uptown houses of worship, where Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy and scholars explained their faiths? take on the ancient code. But this year, Touro Synagogue, a major Reform congregation and a longtime partner, has told the organization it?s no longer willing to take part because the Scouts deny membership to gay troop leaders and gay adolescent Scouts.

For Rabbi Alexis Berk, who used to host the Scouts at Touro, it?s a clear justice issue, closely analogous to the civil rights struggle of a generation ago. She sees public dissent to Scouting?s membership policy as a moral duty flowing from her role as a religious leader.

Elsewhere around the country, Jewish organizations are similarly pushing back against Scouting?s membership policy, especially since July, when Scouting reaffirmed it after a two-year study.

Story by

Bruce Nolan,

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

?This position has taxed Scouting?s relationship with the Jewish community,? said A. J. Kreimer, chairman of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting. ?Our committee?s motto since 1926 has been ?Scouting Serves the Jewish Community? -- and that relationship has been strained.?

The decision from Scouting headquarters also distresses Alan Smason, the founder and engine behind the local Ten Commandments hike.

Smason is a former Boy Scout, the father of a former Scout, and an advocate for Scouting.

And he?s Jewish.

?My personal opinion is the Scouting policy in place now is wrong. They?re discriminating, and there?s no way to justify discrimination in this day and age,? Smason said recently.

But he favors changing Scouting from within.

?It?s like protesting Mardi Gras by refusing to catch beads. You?re not going to stop a parade by refusing to catch the beads.?

If this year?s hike goes as planned, on the day after Thanksgiving, 200 or more Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, family and friends will walk along South Carrollton and St. Charles avenues, stopping at houses of worship or other community sites, where clergy or religious laymen will explain their faith?s vision of one of the commandments.

Smason said this year?s event includes a presentation by Orthodox Rabbi David Polsky of Congregation Anshe Sfard, representing Judaism?s traditionalist wing, as well as Christian and Muslim speakers. They will lunch at the Mormon meeting house on St. Charles Avenue. (Islam does not have Ten Commandments, which are found in Hebrew and Christian Scripture, but the Qu?ran enjoins the same sins at various places throughout its text, said Rafiq Nu?man, a frequent project participant as imam of Masjidur Rahim.)

But this year for the first time since 2004, Touro is off the schedule.

Berk said she participated in past years despite her discomfort with the Scouts? membership policy.

That discomfort has been evident across the Reform Jewish landscape for years. Support for qualified gay men and lesbians as Scout leaders was already full-blown in 2001 when the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism recommended that Reform synagogues like Touro refrain from sponsoring Scout packs or troops.

Under internal and external pressure, Scouting reviewed its membership rules last year.

In July it announced that after a two-year internal study it would keep its policy:

?While (Scouting) does not proactively inquire about the sexual orientation of employees, volunteers, or members, we do not grant membership to individuals who are open or avowed homosexuals or who engage in behavior that would become a distraction to the (Scouting) mission.?

Deron Smith, the spokesman for Boy Scouts of America, said Scouting was not pursuing an agenda or making ?social commentary.?

Rather, he said Scouting had chosen to defer to what it sensed were the wishes of most Scouting parents.

?The vast majority of parents Scouting serves value their right to address issues of sex and sexual orientation within their family,? Smith said in an email. ?They do not sign their children up for Scouting to expose them to this topic.?

Scouting?s partners are heavily represented by Mormon and Catholic organizations. They hold a strong institutional consensus on traditional sexuality;

Locally there has been no dissent from any of Scouting?s regional partners, said Don Ellis, chief executive of Scouting's Southeast Louisiana Council, which oversees 12,000 Scouts in 11 parishes.

But the decision galvanized Berk.

?Maybe it would be one thing if this were a long-standing policy and they?d never revisited it ? but the fact that they freshly revisited it and a rendered a freshly bigoted opinion, well, I freshly feel like I can?t participate,? she said.

?I can?t participate in religious experience that uses religion as hook on which to hang bigotry.?

?And I don?t want to feel shame when I explain this to my children?s children.?

Berk said she called other Jewish organizations to tell them Touro was pulling out of the Scouts project. And according to Rabbi Uri Topolosky, of Congregation Beth Israel, an Orthodox congregation, Berk made an ?impassioned plea? at a meeting of other local rabbis urging them to come out against the Scouting policy as well.

Scouting?s membership posture disappoints Kreimer, a faculty member at Temple University?s Fox School of Business, because he fears it will deprive many Jewish youth of the benefits of Scouting.

?Scouting has had a profound impact on my life professionally and personally,? he said.

Both Kreimer and Smason believe Scouting should permit a kind of local option on gay membership.

?I believe the Scouting movement should adopt a position to allow each chartering organization, religious or not, to choose their leaders,? Kreimer said.

?Temples could choose gay and lesbian leaders if they wanted. Other groups need not.?

Source: http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2012/11/new_orleans_synagogue_boy_scou.html

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