Something Michael Hayes neglected to concern himself with in Tuesday's letter to the editor, ("Private society is allowed to its rules" SN 4/22), is the fact that the Boy Scouts of America is not really the private organization everyone would like to believe it is.

The Scouts often receives sponsorship from such public institutions as schools and police departments and is sometimes awarded direct funding from state and local governments. It is often allowed to recruit and hold events during school hours in public schools and the Department of Defense has made resources available to it at reduced costs. Public land and facilities are often made available for the Scouts to rent at substantially reduced rates.

This means one thing: The Scouts gets public money from each taxpayer's wallet, including atheists and homosexuals, and should be considered a public organization when it comes to its policies of inclusion. At the very least, it is clear in the First Amendment that there is to always be an effective wall between government and religious influence.

This wall of separation is continually targeted for destruction by the ultra-conservative religious right and the government sanctioning of the Scouts' actions are yet another brick chipped out of that wall.

Until the Scouts is made to include every U.S. citizen wishing to join, or is entirely cut off from government entanglement, Darrell Lambert's expulsion is government-funded discrimination.

Roger Smith
English senior