A Message for All United Ways and Funders of the Boy Scouts of America, The Only Youth Program in America That Discriminates Against Gay and Atheist Youth TO: United Way

Please withhold funding from the Simon Kenton Council of the Boy Scouts of America. The National Organization of the Boy Scouts discriminates. You know they do, even though you want to ignore reality.

Discrimination hides under the cloak of respectability. The Constitution isn't there to protect what the majority want, the Constitution has always been there to protect those who aren't represented, "the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Our ancestors came here for freedom, not freedom to malign people who have "different" habits. Over the years, that attitude has been applied to Italians, Sicilians, the Irish, the
Japanese, the Chinese. All those minorities have rights because we fought for them. Once.

The Civil War was about human rights, the Rights of Man, that our American Revolution swept over the world. Among civilized nations in the modern world (United Europe including England and Ireland, Japan, South Africa, and even modern day Russia) all have laws that guarantee the right to choose a mate or a partner according to the way God (your God and my God) made us. Ten Thousand years of hatred and deception do not change the gravity of discrimination, no matter where it is found, whether Hopi Indians can't shop at Safeway, or whether the Amish in Pennsylvania can't drive on the pavement, the Constitution has been blind to what ever it was that "the majoity" said made those minorities "different." DIFFERENCE IS THE MOST PRECIOUS CIVIL RIGHT. The right to shop at Safeway and the right to drive a buggy down the road are just as precious as the right of a teenage boy to grow up with dignity and honor, NO MATTER HOW THE LORD MADE HIM, NO MATTER WHAT HIS CHOSEN VARIETY OF RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION.

One day very soon, you will wake up and look around to find that your sons and daughters, those whom you hold most precious are the ones who are "just a little bit different." Then no tears will wash away the stain of ruined lives who were crushed by wonderful organizations just because it was very hard to stand up for someone who isn't in the room or at the table with you. History is listening. You have a chance to drive back just a little bit of darkness. Vote No...No, the good citizens of Ohio have risen above prejudice. NO organization who voted against prejudice has ever had problems after they voted.

-William A. Rohde, MD
Massachusetts