Fridae

Ignoring the Dec 3 deadline set by the city to amend its membership policy, the Philadelphia council of the Boy Scouts of America now faces eviction from its headquarters, a landmark city-owned building where the group has been paying a token sum of US$1 a year to lease the building since 1928.

According to media reports, city officials said the market value for renting the building was about US$200,000 a year - an amount the organisation says it is unable to pay when invited to remain as full-paying tenants.

Hailed as the birthplace of the Boy Scouts, the Beaux Arts building is the first of the more than 300 council service centres built by the Scouts around the country over the past century.

The local chapter had resisted the city's request to change its discriminatory policy toward gay people requiring members to swear an oath of "duty to God" and prohibiting membership by anyone who is openly gay.

"Since we were founded, we believe that open homosexuality would be inconsistent with the values that we want to communicate with our leaders," said Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the Boy Scouts.

Although in 2000, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts being a private group has a first amendment right to refuse membership to gays, city solicitor Romulo Diaz was quoted as saying that the city will not subsidise that discrimination by passing on the costs to the people of Philadelphia."

City officials added that they have an obligation to abide by a local law that bars taxpayer support for any group that discriminates.

Councilman Darrell L. Clarke who represents the district where the building is located said, "At the end of the day, you can not be in a city-owned facility being subsidised by the taxpayers and not have language in your lease that talks about non-discrimination."

He said talks ended this week when the deadline passed for the group to change its policy; on June 1 the group will be evicted. The City Council voted 16-to-1 to authorise ending the lease on May 31.

In May 2003, a local scout who challenged the organisation's policies - after an openly gay scout from New Jersey was barred from serving as troop leader - by announcing on television that he was gay and that he was a devoted member of the organisation was promptly dismissed.