Gregg Shields, spokesman for Boy Scouts of America:

We're very pleased by the court's decision. This decision affirms our standing as a private organization with rights to set our own standards for membership and leadership, and with this, we can continue our mission of providing character-building programs for young people. That's what we've been doing since 1910. Boy Scouts of America, in the Scout Oath and Laws, talks about a Scout having respect towards others, being courteous, being kind, and that's not going to change. The Boy Scouts respect the rights of others to hold beliefs other than what we believe. We simply ask others to have tolerance for our beliefs. This has not been a quiet case, and through it all, we've gained membership, we've grown. In fact, in recent years, we've seen the fastest growth we've seen since the baby boom. This ruling, hopefully, will bring to a close our litigation and allow us to get back to our work.

James Dale:

I'm saddened by 10 years that I've been fighting for the Boy Scouts to drop this policy of exclusion, so of course the decision from the Supreme Court does sadden me, but I also think there's a lot of room for hope in where America's going. Although the Boy Scouts think discrimination is right, America does not think that discrimination is right. America, overall, is moving in the right direction. This is a setback, but I still think we're moving forward.

All I know about the Boy Scouts of America is that for 12 years, as part of the program, they taught me to be honest and open in my relationships with other people. They taught me to respect and defend the rights of all people -- these are all things the Boy Scouts represent. I joined the Boy Scouts because I believed in camping and leadership and getting involved in community. I still think the Boy Scouts still has a lot to offer America. But I think that if the Boy Scouts are not willing to open up their program to gay kids, there needs to be a place for them. When I was a kid, the Boy Scouts made me feel very good about myself and gave me self-respect and self-esteem, something all kids need, both gay and non-gay. There needs to be a program that takes its place. The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't evolve, and I think the Boy Scouts are making themselves exctinct. That's sad.

Andrew Sullivan is a New York Times Magazine columnist and the author of "Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality."

The court's decision is, in fact, a good one for gay people. It enshrines the basic principle of freedom of association, which protects minorities above all. I'm sad that the Boy Scouts have decided to embrace bigotry, but in a free country they have every right to. I just hope that their organization suffers the fate of most bigoted institutions and declines until it has the courage and wisdom to accept openly gay men and boys as moral leaders.

Professor Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School

The case was a difficult one to begin with, but I think that the opinion by the chief justice is very weak in meeting the primary objection that Justice [John Paul] Stevens' dissent makes -- that is, that the Supreme Court isn't in the business of allowing groups an exemption from otherwise applicable neutral laws, whether laws of dealing with anti-discrimination or other things. It's not generally in the business of letting them write their own ticket and essentially define, without any opportunity for review, the answers to the critical questions that the Constitution requires that we answer.

If we're applying the First Amendment freedom of expressive association, the critical questions are whether the Boy Scouts of America in fact have a coherent anti-gay message, and whether that message would in fact be substantially undermined by the mere membership of an openly gay scout leader. In effect, the majority says, well, the Boy Scouts tell us that's their message. And they tell us that the inclusion of Dale will foul the message up, even though there's no real reason to believe it. Therefore, they win.

But there's an additional irony in that several members of majority -- the chief justice who wrote the opinion and justices Thomas and Scalia who joined it -- have gone out of their way over and over again to say that in their view, the Constitution protects only explicitly enumerated rights, like the right to free speech and the right to freedom of expression. Well, the right to this very broad form of self-defining association -- which is linked by a very weak kind of umbilical cord to the free speech clause -- is pretty far out on the limb for someone who takes a very narrow view of what the Constitution protects.

So it's hard not to think that consciously or unconsciously -- and despite the chief justice's disclaimer of being influenced in any way by the majority's attitudes toward homosexuality -- that the majority is influenced by its sense that the Boy Scouts are a time-honored motherhood and apple pie association, and they simply couldn't bring themselves to believe that a state has the right to require that group to embrace the possibility of members who are outside that mainstream. Without that, it's really very hard to account for a decision that in doctrinal and strictly constitutional terms is so weak.

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