Date: Sat, 21 Oct 1995 00:19:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Chris Purdom Subject: IWG Boston Herald Letter The following is going out on Interfaith Working Group letterhead (2 congregations, 4 religious organizations and 14 clergy - let me know if you want to be added). Similiar responses are strongly encouraged: October 19, 1995 Editors The Boston Herald 1 Herald Square Boston, MA 02106-2096 Dear Editors: Don Feder's column on the Boy Scouts' discriminatory hiring practices is one of the most unenlightened and religiously-narrow-minded pieces of nonsense ever printed. "Only a tortuous reasoning process" could apply Supreme Court rulings on free association to discrimination in hiring. The Boy Scouts are not a religious organization, and are therefore not exempt from fair hiring practices. A secular organization cannot accept government monies and then discriminate as a sectarian organization, a simple Constitutional truth that is lost on Mr. Feder. Mr. Feder ignores the fact that duty to god, moral straightness, decency and propriety are not universally recognized as the unique domain of heterosexuals; nor does he understand that there are plenty of heterosexuals who support equal rights for sexual minorities, and who happily and knowingly entrust their children to organizations where they are supervised by homosexuals. Mr. Feder consistently confuses sexual orientation with his limited knowledge of the behavior of some sexual minorities, peppering his already-putrid concoc- tion with phrases like "flagrant homosexuals," claiming that gays have "an in-your-face drive to reject normalcy." He refers to a Village Voice piece criticizing the practice of unprotected queer sex (although it's doubtful he would approve of protected queer sex) and winds up with a ridiculously tenuous yet completely predictable tie-in to drugs, gang violence, and social disintegration. Every day another person of faith, another clergyperson, another congregation, another religious organization, recognizes that this demonization of sexual mi- norities in the name of God is wrong, and stands up to be counted. If the Boy Scouts of America wants to function as a discriminatory religious organization operating separate from the entanglement of government monies, then they are free to do so, but if their understanding of morality and sexual orientation does not progress beyond Mr. Feder's they will find few parents left who will entrust their children to an organization dedicated to the preservation of bigotry. Sincerely, Barbara Purdom Christopher Purdom Interfaith Working Group Coordinators