Group Cuts Off Donations To Boy Scouts

A group that funnels contributions from city employees to charities will no longer give money to the Boy Scouts because of the national organization’s policy of not admitting homosexuals, officials said.

Through the Annual Joint Fundraising Drive, city employees raised more than $563,000 for nine umbrella organizations that distribute money to various charities. The donations are deducted automatically from employee paychecks.

One of the umbrella groups, Local Independent Charities, listed four California Boy Scouts councils on its recipient list.

A member of the Board of Supervisors’ Finance Committee, Mabal Teng, had planned to hold up approval of the employees’ Annual Joint Fundraising Drive because of the money made available to scouting troops. But the Local Independent Charities group decided on its own to drop the Boy Scouts from the charities it supports using the city employees’ donations.

“Local Independent Charities respectfully requests the committee’s permission to amend its list of proposed participating charities … by removing the Boy Scouts of America’s Marin, San Francisco, Mount Diablo and Greater Yosemite councils,” the group’s board president, Don McPartland, wrote Teng.

The supervisor accepted the offer.

“We didn’t strong-arm them. We didn’t arm-twist them,” Teng said. “They volunteered to remove the Boy Scouts. We just told them that including the Boy Scouts would cause great difficulty for the Finance Committee.

“It would not be appropriate for us to use our infrastructure and resources to help groups that discriminate.”

The Corte Madera-based umbrella group funds dozens of other organizations, including the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

“Obviously, we’re saddened over such action,” said Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America.

“The Boy Scouts of America have long taught traditional values, and a person who engages in homosexuality is not a role model for those values.”