Although there’s been plenty of bad press in recent past, you can now chalk up the Boy Scouts of America as another shamed American Institution, at least in terms of the "purity" they claim to represent.
The Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America regarding a court decision from 7 years ago. A judge decided in 2003 that the Boy Scouts could no longer lease land from the city of San Diego for $1 a year. The agreement violated federal laws that prohibit the government from promoting religion. The Boy Scouts have consistently claimed that they are not a religious organization, although the organization believes in God and makes their members swear an oath to serve in duty to God. Yet another group that believes they are above laws requiring the separation of church and state. Consistently in America, religious groups are no longer content with their freedom to practice their religion, they are now challenging the boundaries of their beliefs on a regular basis.
That’s just the beginning. As if following in the footsteps of the Catholic Church, a court has ordered the Boy Scouts of America to pay 18.5 million dollars in the case of a man who was molested by a troop leader the Boy Scouts organization kept files on as a known pedophile. In fact, for the first time, the Boy Scouts of America has been forced to reveal their "secret files". Known also as the "perversion files", they’ve been kept by the organization for more than 70 years. The problem is, just as the Catholic Church continues to do, finding that someone is suspected of being a pedophile is not enough for even the Boy Scouts to take immediate action. Had they done so, Kerry Lewis, the man who brought the current suit, would not have been molested. A jury awarded him 1.4 million in compensatory damages.
News organizations, including the New York Times, are attempting to gain access to the secret files, which were shown only to the lawyers and the jury in this case.
