Debate Reignites Over ALSC Link to Boy Scouts

Staff -- School Library Journal, 5/1/1998

Should the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, work with organizations that ban young people who identify themselves as gay or who don't believe in God?

That 10-year-old on-again, off-again debate resumed in March after the California Supreme Court handed down a decision to allow the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to exclude homosexuals, agnostics, and atheists as members because BSA is a private group.

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, has had a relationship with the Boy Scouts dating back some 60 years. Today, ALSC creates lists of recommended books for Boy Scout merit badge booklets on more than 100 topics such as aviation, electronics, and insect study.

At ALA's Annual Conference in June, Councilor-at-Large Mark C. Rosenzweig plans to introduce a resolution to suspend the BSA relationship, citing ALA Policy 9.5 which "specifically prohibits ALA or its divisions, roundtables, etc. from having 'formal relationships with organizations which violate ALA's principles and policies to human rights and social justice as set forth in ALA's policies, procedures, and position statements and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.'"