"The Scouts are a private organization and have every right to set their own membership standards"
About this Quote
“The Scouts are a private organization and have every right to set their own membership standards” is politics dressed up as constitutional hygiene. John Doolittle isn’t really talking about camping trips or merit badges; he’s drawing a bright legal line meant to end a messy moral argument. The phrasing “private organization” does the heavy lifting. It relocates the fight from the public square (Is this discrimination?) to the courtroom (Is this association?), where “rights” can be invoked like a shield and the speaker can appear principled rather than punitive.
The key maneuver is the word “every.” It’s absolutist, an attempt to close debate by treating the question as settled doctrine. “Membership standards” is another softener: a bureaucratic euphemism that sanitizes exclusion. It suggests neutral criteria and orderly governance, even when the contested issue is typically about who counts as acceptable - often LGBTQ people, atheists, or others seen as violating a “moral” code.
Context matters: this line echoes the rhetoric that surrounded the Boy Scouts of America’s high-profile legal and cultural battles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially the Supreme Court’s Boy Scouts of America v. Dale decision (2000), which affirmed the organization’s right to exclude gay scoutmasters under expressive association. In that era, politicians could signal allegiance to “traditional values” while avoiding explicit hostility: defend “freedom of association,” and you can wink at the base without naming the target.
The subtext is a warning: keep your hands off. It’s not just a defense of the Scouts; it’s a template for cordoning off institutions from evolving norms.
The key maneuver is the word “every.” It’s absolutist, an attempt to close debate by treating the question as settled doctrine. “Membership standards” is another softener: a bureaucratic euphemism that sanitizes exclusion. It suggests neutral criteria and orderly governance, even when the contested issue is typically about who counts as acceptable - often LGBTQ people, atheists, or others seen as violating a “moral” code.
Context matters: this line echoes the rhetoric that surrounded the Boy Scouts of America’s high-profile legal and cultural battles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially the Supreme Court’s Boy Scouts of America v. Dale decision (2000), which affirmed the organization’s right to exclude gay scoutmasters under expressive association. In that era, politicians could signal allegiance to “traditional values” while avoiding explicit hostility: defend “freedom of association,” and you can wink at the base without naming the target.
The subtext is a warning: keep your hands off. It’s not just a defense of the Scouts; it’s a template for cordoning off institutions from evolving norms.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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