Two years ago, two roofers left a bar in Laramie, Wyoming with Matthew Sheppard, a twenty-one-year-old gay college student. Physically small, Sheppard was a personable, well-groomed young man. The two roofers took him to the edge of town, where they robbed and pistol whipped him and left him tethered to a fence. Tragically, Sheppard died five days later.

The national response to this vicious hate crime was swift and horrified. Yet it revealed the bitter reality that too many people still hold a deep-seated revulsion against homosexuals, especially gay men. The causes of this abhorrence are complex. I believe that one reason for this pathological animosity to gays is that people erroneously assume that a homosexual is a perverted child molester. The truth is that a homosexual is no more likely to abuse children sexually than a heterosexual.

Numerous national religious bodies are now struggling with whether or not to include gays as ecclesiastical leaders. This issue is tearing mainline Protestant denominations asunder. Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Methodist church bodies, in particular, are locked in controversy about whether or not to permit ordaining homosexual clergy and officiating at same-sex unions.

By contrast, the institutions of American Reform Judaism have unabashedly supported gays in every arena of religious life. As far back as 1977, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations opposed all forms of discrimination against gay and lesbian persons. Ten years later, the Union adopted a strong resolution affirming that one's sexual orientation should not be a consideration for membership or participation in the activities of any affiliated Reform congregation.

Then three years later, in 1990, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the official international association of Reform rabbis, with almost 2,000 members, approved the ordination of openly gay rabbis. Last March, this same rabbinical body went on record endorsing the prerogative of rabbis who choose to solemnize unions between two Jews of the same sex, who are in a committed relationship.

Reform leaders adopted these revolutionary decisions after grappling with the age-old prohibitions of the Torah against sexual relations between two males. Lesbian relationships are not discussed in Jewish sacred texts, incidentally. Those who cite the Bible to object to gay unions ignore the fact that these same texts also prescribe stoning people who kindle fire on Shabbat. They also condone slavery and treat women as domestic property.

We do look to our Torah as our chief source of moral guidance and inspiration. Yet we recognize that its authors lived in a pre-scientific age in which males and females were not considered equal. Those who crafted these texts never conceived of the possibility of two men or two women who live together in a loving, monogamous relationship.

Even the American Psychiatric Association has roundly rejected its previously negative stance towards homosexuality.

At one time, the APA regarded it as a behavioral aberration practiced by deviant individuals. Now these mental health professionals understand that homosexuality is not a behavioral choice. They emphasize that such is the way people are born and that homosexuals are just as emotionally normal as heterosexuals.

Yet, many people still feel threatened by homosexuality and would like to banish gays and lesbians from their midst. Perhaps this mentality led to the decision of the Boy Scouts of America to forbid a gay man from becoming a scoutmaster. The case of James Dale, in New Jersey, has become a cause celebre. At the age of eight, Dale joined the Boy Scouts and eventually attained the rank of Eagle Scout. When he became 18, he assumed an assistant scoutmaster position.

Upon entering Rutgers University, he got in touch with his gay sexual orientation and joined the university's Lesbian Gay Alliance. When leaders of his local Boy Scout council learned of his "coming out," they instantly revoked his membership. They advised him that the Boy Scouts "specifically forbids membership to homosexuals."

Dale soon brought a lawsuit against the Scouts. The New Jersey Supreme Court heard the case and ruled that the Boy Scouts was a public accommodation. Therefore, it could not legally deny membership to gays under the state's non-discrimination statute.

However, last June 28, in a 5-4 decision, our United States Supreme Court reversed the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling. The majority argued that this is a matter of our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association. We have the right to form private clubs to promote our own points of view and to exclude people who don't conform to those views.

After all, even a synagogue can legally deny the presidency to one who is not Jewish. It can also forbid women, if it so chooses, to be called to the Torah or to be counted in the minyan.

Furthermore, organizations like the Boy Scouts receive no public funds. Thus they can set rules for leadership that reflect their own particular belief system. Boy Scout officials argue that an avowed homosexual is not a proper role model for the values expressed in the Scout Oath.

However, I embrace an opposing point of view. I agree that any club or organization can establish its own criteria for leadership and membership. However, the real question is: Can we support an organization that blatantly excludes people on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation? The obvious answer is no.

But this response becomes particularly painful when we apply it to the Boy Scouts. We all recognize that the Boy Scouts has, for decades, exerted a most positive favorable influence on the character and citizenship of young men. It imparts to adolescents important lessons for wholesome human development.

Yet, the Boy Scout policy is discriminatory. It has set off a firestorm of protests among previously passionate champions of the Boy Scouts. It boils down to an issue of human rights. Many former Eagle Scouts, including Rabbi Paul Menitoff, the Executive Vice-President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, have returned their badges to Boy Scout headquarters in Texas.

Some Reform Temples have evicted the troops that they have sponsored for decades from their premises. Rabbi Steven Foster, Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Denver, the largest Jewish congregation in that city, with almost 2,000 families, is a former Eagle Scout. Not only did he return his badges, but, with the support of his Temple Board of Trustees, told the leaders of Troop 37, which Temple Emanuel has hosted for forty years, that they can no longer meet in the Temple after December. He stressed that the membership policies of the Boy Scouts of America are contrary "to all that he holds dear and true."

Opposition has spread to the wider community, as well. United Way agencies give about $9,000,000 nationally to the Boy Scouts of America. Now, 24 United Way chapters have greatly reduced or eliminated their financial support of Boy Scouts. Paradoxically, one of these is the United Way in Evanston, Illinois, the city which was the national headquarters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

How then should we, as conscientious Reform Jews of Temple Beth-El, react to this Boy Scout ban against homosexual leaders? I urge all of you who are Scout parents and leaders to direct messages of protest to Boy Scout officials to have this policy overturned. Since we do not sponsor a Temple Boy Scout troop, we do not have to confront this issue directly. However, if we did sponsor one, I would not suggest evicting the group. Rather, I would ask our Temple leadership to notify the Boy Scouts of America that we would permit a homosexual to become a Boy Scout troop leader, even though it contravenes national policy. Then, if the Boy Scouts of America forbids us to continue sponsorship under these conditions, so be it.

We, who are the Rabbis of Temple Beth-El, face two sensitive situations. Often we are asked to write references for those who aspire to the rank of Eagle Scout. We will continue to do so, but will now include a paragraph strongly objecting to Boy Scout policies against homosexuals. Today we would consider them contrary to the will of God.

A more delicate situation arises when we are asked to offer an invocation or benediction at a ceremony when one of our young men at Temple becomes an Eagle Scout. This is far from a black-and-white situation. On the one hand, we want to share our pride with this young man and his family over this monumental achievement in his young life and not mar the joy of the occasion. On the other hand, we must register our strenuous objection to this policy of exclusion.

In short, I believe that all of us need to articulate our own fierce opposition to this national Boy Scout policy. We must convince its leaders that this policy is not, in the words of the Scout Oath, "morally straight." Amen.

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