SCOUTS: 'Compelled' to revoke charter

Sheriff Wolfinger claims he is “compelled” to revoke the Sheriff Department’s Boy Scouts charter because of the Boy Scouts’ decision to allow as members young men who identify as gay. (KCSO may drop Boy Scouts charter, May 25). As Wolfinger stated, “It would be inappropriate for the sheriff’s office to sponsor an organization that is promoting a lifestyle that is in violation of state law” and “[s]odomy is against the law in Idaho.”

While his sentiment obviously comes from a strong dedication to upholding the laws of the State of Idaho, he is wrong that the Boy Scouts are promoting any conduct that is criminal. The sheriff appears to believe that same-sex sexual relations are criminal in Idaho under the sodomy statute (leaving aside his flawed presumption that the Boy Scouts in any way “promot[e]” such a “lifestyle.”) However, the crime of sodomy in the state of Idaho, codified at I.C. 18–6605, no longer encompasses same-sex sexual conduct. The Idaho Supreme Court has explicitly acknowledged that the United States Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, binding on the states, “legalized the practice of homosexuality and in essence made it a protected practice under the Due Process clause of the United States Constitution.” McGriff v. McGriff, 140 Idaho 642, 648 (2004).

Idaho’s sodomy statute as it is constitutionally enforceable today has nothing to do with the sex of the participants: rather, it prohibits is non-consensual oral and anal sex, whether performed between same-sex or opposite-sex partners. It is unreasonable to assert that the Boy Scouts are actively promoting forced oral or anal sex. Only if they were would the sheriff need to, at least under his reasoning and under this statute, withdraw the Department’s Boy Scouts charter.

Moreover, if the sheriff has been using the sodomy statute as justification to arrest same-sex couples having consensual sex, his actions have been unconstitutional, and it is he, not the Boy Scouts, who this state should withdraw its support from. It is unlikely that this statute has been used at all, though, which makes it all the more egregious that it is being exploited in this way now.

SUSAN MOSS

Coeur d’Alene