After the court found for the Boy Scouts, conservative groups hailed the decision as a landmark victory for the rights of private associations. Scout leaders expressed relief that their long court fight was over. But while the legal wrangling may be done, the larger gay-rights struggle rages on. “I think that I’ve fought the good fight and I saw my part through to completion,” Dale, 29, told NEWSWEEK. “But maybe now the torch gets passed to somebody else. There are a lot of people out there that are really upset by this and I challenge them to take the next step.”
That next step, activists suggest, may enlist public opinion as part of efforts to increase public acceptance of gay lifestyles. Despite concerns that the Boy Scout ruling may open the door for others to discriminate, gay-rights advocates insist the decision will have limited impact. “Anti-gay groups did not get the ‘free pass’ they were looking for to dismantle civil-rights laws that provide equal protection to lesbians and gay men,” says Matt Coles, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. If anything, activists say, the ruling will serve only to marginalize the Scouts. “The Boy Scouts are going to be left behind if they don’t recognize changing societal attitudes toward homosexuality,” says a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Last week’s decision, activists suggest, will be remembered as a bump along the path to progress. In the past year alone, gay groups point out, Georgia and New York have passed hate-crime laws and Vermont has recognized same-sex unions. Gay-straight alliances continue to be formed. The fight now, according to activists, is to ensure that those advances continue. AIDS, which had become a less prominent concern, will again command attention with the finding that HIV infections among gay men in San Francisco have risen sharply. And the battle will be focused on letting people know that the coming election could help tip the balance of the Supreme Court in their favor. “The courts don’t have the last word,” says Evan Wolfson of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented Dale. That last word belongs to many competing voices.
