Local Funding

Unless a group somehow violates the agency agreement, the Boy Scouts will continue to receive funds from United Way of Spokane County, United Way President Victor Forni said.

He did brace his staff for an expected barrage of phone calls since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to exclude avowed homosexuals as troop leaders.

“We have received one phone call,” Forni said. “He expressed concern that we would not be funding the Boy Scouts.”

Current state and federal discrimination laws do not protect people based on sexual orientation.

The Spokane Human Rights Ordinance does offer protections based on sexual orientation, but it has no jurisdiction over private organizations, said Vince Lemus, Spokane’s Human Rights specialist.

In 1990, Planned Parenthood chose to remove itself from Spokane’s United Way network, Forni said. The Spokane AIDS Network has never been a recipient of the the communitywide fund-raiser.

While some local organizations have started their internal fund-raising drives, United Way has not begun this year’s campaign. Once it does, there may be more of an organized effort to protest at United Way offices, said John Deen, editor of the Stonewall News, a gay-community newspaper published in Spokane.