The ACLU is out to remove God from the public square, starting with the Boy Scouts.

By JO ANN DAVIS

Date published: 4/10/2005

WASHINGTON--This summer, an estimated 40,000 Boy Scouts and their leaders will take to the 76,000 acres of land at Fort A.P. Hill to do some-thing traditionally American: They will go camping. The Boy Scout Jamboree at A.P. Hill is a quadrennial gathering of Scouts and a celebration of what is good in America.

In these trying times, I think we can all agree that institutions like the Boy Scouts, and the sight of 40,000 young men camping together under the Scouts' instilled ethic of hard work and civic virtue, are welcome additions to our current times.

That is, of course, unless you are the American Civil Liberties Union. Unfortunately, the ACLU has once again set its sights on Boy Scouts as if it were poison in the well of American culture.

This combativeness toward this American institution rests upon a single premise: The Boy Scouts acknowledges God. So in the eyes of the ACLU and their legion of lawyers, the federal government can no longer acknowledge the Boy Scouts.

Unfortunately, the Boy Scouts of America has become the ACLU's next sacrificial lamb in the organization's effort to rid the recognition of God from the public square.

Over the past several years, the ACLU has supported a number of initiatives aimed at destroying the Boy Scouts' relationship with the federal government, and the Boy Scouts in general.

The organization has now entered litigation against the Boy Scouts in an effort to end the longstanding relationship between the Boy Scouts and the U.S. military. The problem, as the ACLU sees it, is that the Boy Scouts requires its members to take an oath that reads, in part, "to do my duty to God and my country." That's it.

Never mind that the Supreme Court asks that "God save the United States and this honorable court," or that our national currency reads, "In God we trust," or that the military and congressional oaths of office end with "so help me God."

No, to the ACLU, this simple acknowledgment of God by young men is reason to sever a nearly 100-year-old relationship between the Boy Scouts and federal government.

I have introduced legislation in the House of Representatives to protect the Boy Scouts from efforts to end the relationship between it and the Pentagon. This measure, the Support Our Scouts Act of 2005, simply removes any doubt that federal agencies may welcome Scouts to hold meetings and go camping on federal property.

This legislation is the companion bill to Senate legislation offered by Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. Additionally, the act clarifies that federal law does not compel a federal agency from providing less support to Scouts than the agency has in the past, such as in hosting the National Jamboree for Scouts and leaders.

Date published: 4/10/2005