Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She contributes regularly to The Week. Previously, she worked for the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), covering defense and open government issues. Her work has also appeared on TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. In her free time, she plays electric violin in an Indie rock band.

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Boy Scouts May Allow Gay Members…Sort Of

—By Dana Liebelson

| Mon Jan. 28, 2013 5:17 PM PST

The Boy Scouts of America announced today that it will consider allowing troops to decide whether to admit gay members, an unprecedented move that comes after months of online protests, lost funders, and scouts renouncing their memberships. But even if the organization rules next week to drop their long-standing ban on gay scoutmasters and scouts, chartered organizations would still be allowed to discriminate if they choose to. As BSA director of public relations Deron Smith explained in a statement, "The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents."

Rich Ferraro, a spokesman for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), says that the announcement is "a big accomplishment," as it's "the first time the Boy Scouts have said it is publicly considering changing the ban." But lifting the ban without prohibiting troops from discriminating might not go far enough, he adds. "We're not going to rest until every gay young adult out there is able to safely participate."

Nonetheless, since the Boy Scouts reaffirmed its ban on gay members last summer, the organization has seen at least four big funders pull or postpone their funding. Thousands of scouts have spoken out against the policy, and more than 1.2 million Americans have signed petitions against it, according to Scouts for Equality.

The Boy Scouts was also losing local leaders because of the policy. Just last week, Pack 442 in Cloverly, Maryland, was pressured by its regional council to take down an anti-discrimination statement or risk losing its charter. Theresa Phillips, the pack's committee chair, told Mother Jones that after they were forced to take the statement down, she asked for her name to be removed from the charter. Her husband, a den leader, had renounced his Eagle Scout award months before. "My family loved participating in scouting, and I look forward to the day when we might once again be able to take part," Jennifer Tyrrell, an Ohio mom who was forced to stop leading her son's troop because she is gay, told GLAAD. Kate Brown, a former den leader in the Washington, DC, area, says that she took her two sons out of the program after she saw what happened to Tyrrell.

Advocates are optimistic that if the Boy Scouts' national leadership lifts the ban, troops like Brown's, Tyrrell's, and Phillips' will allow gay members and their families to openly participate. But just how many gay-friendly troops might emerge if the ban is rolled back? According to CNN, 70 percent of Scout troops are affiliated with a church or religious group, and the Catholic and Mormon churches are some of the Scouts' biggest backers. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans are against having openly gay adults serve as Boy Scout leaders. The conservative Family Research Council is encouraging scouts to "stand strong," asserting that rolling back the anti-gay policy "would be devastating to an organization that has prided itself on the development of character in boys."

Correction: An earlier version of this post used the terms "troops" and "packs" interchangeably. Packs are only used to describe units of the Cub Scouts, BSA's program for boys ages 7 to 10.

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Boy Scouts Threaten to Kick Out Pack For Supporting Gay Members

—By Dana Liebelson

| Fri Jan. 25, 2013 1:57 PM PST

Prayitno, Flickr

Update: Pack 442 took down its non-discrimination statement on Saturday after pressure from the National Capital Area Council, and will keep its charter as a result. Theresa Phillips, committee chair of Pack 442 tells Mother Jones the pack will continue to welcome gay members and families, even without the statement. "I asked for my name to removed from the charter because I feel like if gay/lesbian individuals are not worthy of being registered leaders, then I am not either," Phillips says.

The Boy Scouts council in charge of overseeing scout programs in the Washington, DC-area is threatening to kick out a Maryland pack for posting a statement on its website declaring it won't discriminate against gay scouts. The pack has to decide by tomorrow whether to remove the statement.

In September, the families of Pack 442, which is based in Cloverly, Maryland (a small town less than 20 miles from the nation's capital), anonymously voted and overwhelmingly approved to adopt a non-discrimination statement. According to Theresa Phillips, committee chair of Pack 442, the pack wanted Boy Scouts of America to know "we will not stand for the discrimination of homosexual minors or adults whatsoever." Here's the sentence causing the controversy:

Not long after the statement was posted, the National Capital Area Council (NCAC), one of the bigger local councils of the Boy Scouts of America, asked the pack to strike it from the website. "At first they [said] they would "allow" us to leave it up based on our right to freedom of speech. Now they are doing a 180 and basically asking us to either conform to BSA's discriminatory policy or get out," says Phillips.

Les Baron, CEO and Scout Executive of NCAC, confirms to Mother Jones that if the pack doesn't erase the declaration, "they will not be recognized as an organization, although that's our last resort." That means that the pack will lose access to member insurance, rank badges, and scout camps. The only problem with the statement, Baron acknowledges, is the reference to sexual orientation. "That's a message that's against our policy, and we don't want it continue to be out in our community," Baron says.

In July 2012, the Boy Scouts reaffirmed its ban on gay scouts and scoutmasters, and the organization has been losing financial backers as a result. This isn't the first time the organization has threatened to kick out a chartered organization for welcoming gay members. In 2003, scouts in Sebastopol, California, lost their charter for refusing to drop a similar statement. In 2012 in Ottawa Hills, Ohio and Redlands, California, families were forced to choose between accepting gay members and retaining membership.

"To think that the Boy Scouts would rather cast out elementary school children than accept a parent-approved policy allowing gay children and parents to participate is just unconscionable,” Herndon Graddick, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, tells Mother Jones. “How many young Scouts is the BSA willing to sacrifice in order to preserve its harmful and discriminatory policies? This despicable act of bullying and intimidation is yet another reminder that the BSA is out of touch with its members and the American public at large.”

Baron says that "we're working through our differences with the pack right now." Pack 442's website is hosting an online poll, open to the public but intended for pack families, on whether it should remove the non-discrimination statement. It must decide whether to apply for membership by January 26, so it is closing the poll at 8 PM on Friday. Phillips says the pack has not determined yet whether it will take it down, and is waiting for the poll to determine "how families feel on this matter." According to Pack 442's website, if they do decide to remove it, they plan to return to a "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy.

"Clearly the Council's threat reflects a fear that Boy Scouts of America will crack down on NCAC, which has a lot on the line," says Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout raised by two lesbian mothers, and founder of Scouts for Equality. "It's unfortunate and disappointing that they're bowing to this pressure instead of opposing the ban and being brave, as Scouts swear to do every time they recite the Scout Law."

Correction: An earlier version of this post used the terms "troops" and "packs" interchangeably. Packs are only used to describe units of the Cub Scouts, BSA's program for boys aged 7 to 10.

The Obama Administration Wants States to Grab Your Personal Data

The Department of Homeland Security won't back off a controversial Bush-era driver's license law

—By Dana Liebelson

| Fri Jan. 25, 2013 9:20 AM PST

Real ID: Stopping your cat from stealing your identity? Tiny Banquet Committee, Flickr

Last year, when I tried to use my (perfectly legal, thank you) Montana state driver's license to enter a bar in Washington, DC, the bouncer rejected it on the basis that "no real ID would have bear holograms." Actually, in the Big Sky state we do—but the guy was on to something: Montana is one of 37 states still defying the Real ID Act of 2005, a Bush-era law intended to fight terrorism by standardizing security requirements for state IDs. The Department of Homeland Security was forced to grant yet another extension last month for states that haven't complied with the law. But experts say the delay doesn't mean the Obama administration is backing off the controversial security requirements.

In order to comply with the Real ID Act, states must obtain from you, at minimum, photo identification, your birth certificate (or other date of birth verification), your social security number, documentation of legal status, and proof of your home address. State IDs that don't comply with these security requirements are supposed to be barred from airports and federal buildings, although DHS hasn't enforced that yet. More controversially, the law requires that states make this personal information sharable to other states, in a de facto database that could be easily accessed by the federal government. But as Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, explains: "That hasn't really happened, the database never got built. But the federal government still has the legal tools to access this information."

"The Real ID Act is a loser every way you slice it," Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the CATO Institute, tells Mother Jones. "But this is the first time DHS is only extending its deadline for certain states. They could be positioning themselves to actually start enforcing this against states like Montana that don't have a lot of people and don't have a big airline industry."

But Homeland Security Janet Napolitano—who herself was was critical of the law as Arizona governor—might have a fight on her hands. At least sixteen states have actually passed legislation rejecting the law, and DHS estimates it will cost states a minimum of $3.9 billion to implement over ten years.

Calabrese tells Mother Jones that though some of the privacy advocates' worst fears about REAL ID—like a giant database of personal information—haven't been realized, other concerns remain. States following the law must require home addresses on your license, "which can be a nightmare for victims of abuse." States that scan and store personal documents online as required by the law (although in 2008 an exception was made for birth certificates), are also "leaving personal information floating around for identity theft," Calabrese adds.

The law does have its defenders, who argue that these security requirements make US borders more secure from foreign terrorists and undocumented immigrants (which are not infrequently lumped together in discussions of the Act.) Jessica Zuckerman, research associate at the Heritage Foundation, argues that "the Real ID Act is enhancing security at the DMVs and secure databases prevent fraud." My colleague Kevin Drum has written about how a national ID could help end the voter fraud controversy, but points out that Real ID still leaves us with "50 different cards managed by 50 different bureaucracies."

For Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the key concern is that "because of Real ID, states are collecting far more information about you than they have in the past." That information is sometimes shared with commercial data-miners. EPIC has also submitted a friend of the court brief to the Supreme Court in a case challenging lawyers' use of personal information obtained from DMVs to find potential clients for group action lawsuits. EPIC is arguing that the court should limit states from disclosing such information.

But even though Real ID has proven unpopular with Democrats and Republicans alike, don't expect it to disappear. "No politician is going to step up and say we need to get rid of this loser because they don't want to look bad on security," says Harper. So, if you're dead set on keeping your information to yourself, you might do what my bear-hologram license has forced me to do: Don't drive, and bring your passport to happy hour.

Boy Scouts Losing Big Funders Over Anti-Gay Policy

—By Dana Liebelson

| Wed Jan. 23, 2013 8:53 AM PST

The Boy Scouts of America teach young men how to build fires, pitch tents, weave camping chairs, and "be prepared"—unless your son happens to be gay. But the Boy Scouts long-standing policy of banning "open or avowed homosexuals" is starting to cost it some major financial backers: In the last six months, companies including UPS, United Way, the Merck Company Foundation and the Intel Foundation have announced they will drop or postpone funding for the Boy Scouts. Verizon Communications could be next: Over 70,000 people have signed a petition asking the corporation to stop funding the Scouts over their discriminatory policies.

"We more than understand how much value the Scouting program offers to our Nation and its youth," Brad Hankins, a campaign director for Scouts for Equality, the organization behind the Verizon petition and others, tells Mother Jones. "However, we feel that over the long term the damage the ban has caused to Scouting's perception in our changing cultural climate is much greater than a temporary loss of funds."

Since at least the late 1970s, the Boy Scouts executive leadership has discriminated against gay members. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that forcing the organization to accept gay members would violate its rights under the First Amendment, and the Boy Scouts reaffirmed their ban on gay scouts and scoutmasters in 2012. Since then, hundreds of Scouts have returned their pins in protest, and the Boy Scouts anti-gay stance has even outlasted the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy.

Hankins says it's hard to say how much money the Boy Scouts have lost from donors since the petitions began, because the "information isn't immediately disclosed." However, according to The American Independent, in the 2009 tax year, the biggest donor to the Boy Scouts was the Intel Foundation, who donated nearly $700,000. Intel announced in September it will stop funding Scout troops that adhere to the ban, and UPS followed suit (Scouts for Equality ran petitions against both companies.)

Intel, UPS, and other companies have recently stopped funding the Boy Scouts. The American Independent

Verizon gave at least $300,000 to the Boy Scouts in 2009, according to The American Independent, and Scouts for Equality claims that Verizon's donations conflict with its policy of not funding organizations that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Harry J. Mitchell, a spokesman for Verizon, told Mother Jones that the company "does not discriminate on the basis of [sexual orientation]" and they expect "all of its grant recipients to comply with all applicable laws."

But that won't stop customers from boycotting the company. "Our family uses Verizon: each of our three sons included, one of which is gay. Two of them are Eagle Scouts and one is 13 and is a Life Scout. We fully support a full financial boycott," writes Christie Draper, from Aliso Viejo, California. "Give the money to the Girl Scouts instead."

The Boy Scouts did not respond to request for comment.

MAP: Which GOPers Voted to Help Victims of Katrina, but Not Sandy?

Fifty-eight Republicans in the House supported aid for just one storm.

—By Dana Liebelson

| Tue Jan. 22, 2013 4:01 AM PST

On Tuesday, the Senate is expected to finally approve a Sandy aid package worth about $50 billion, three months after the hurricane devastated major metropolitan regions on the East Coast. Many GOP representatives bitterly oppose this bill and an immediate relief package failed to pass the GOP-controlled House in 2012. But when it comes to hurricane relief, the GOP isn't exactly consistent: In 2005, 58 House Republicans who voted no on the Sandy aid bill approved a disaster relief package for Katrina victims worth $51.8 billion—less than two weeks after the storm hit.

The map below shows states where representatives voted on both Katrina and Sandy aid bills but changed their votes. For example, Florida, which was slammed by Katrina, has two GOP reps who voted for Katrina aid and nixed disaster relief for their Northern neighbors. States that suffered less severe Katrina damages, like Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee, are all represented by Republicans who chose to support the victims of Katrina but not Sandy. Louisiana is the exception; the lawmakers that have been around through both hurricanes appear to still have Katrina's aftermath fresh in their minds: Republican Reps. Charles Boustany and Rodney Alexander both supported aid for Sandy.

Conservatives are using the usual argument that the Sandy aid bill had more pork and wasteful spending than the Katrina aid bill. Jason Klindt, a spokesman for Rep. Sam Graves (one of the reps who voted for Katrina aid and against Sandy aid), told ProPublica that "the difference is the fiscal state of the country."

But Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor and author of The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State, says that this doesn't tell the whole story: "Although blue NOLA was hit, the rest of the states on the Gulf are red states, and Louisiana has a lot of red parts." She points out that "House Republicans have got themselves tied into kind of a pretzel" because "they have made ideological commitments against pork." Dauber says it's possible those Republicans who voted against the bill did so in order to fend off challenges in the primaries from Tea Party and other rightist candidates, a risky political maneuver, as "voting against disaster relief is super stupid."

That's a lesson Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) appears to have learned the hard way: Before his state was hit by Sandy, he voted against aid for Katrina. He's the only GOP representative in the United States that was present for both disasters, and changed his mind in the end.

Correction: A previous version of the key stated that the purple area refers to a Democrat. It refers to Scott Garrett, a Republican.

Front page image: Wang Chengyun/ZUMA