First, they're a private organization, not a profession.

First, if you wish to address discrimination, address it all. You accuse me of being blind to discrimination perpetrated by my own side and here you defend it on yours. Double plus not good.

Second, if the private organization thing is what bothers you, that means that all private institutions of higher learning are off the board here, and we only need to argue about state colleges and universities. Somehow I think that's not what the objective is. I think you guys want Harvard a lot more than you want, say, Shippensburg University (a very good PA state university), merely because I had to add that parenthetical phrase to identify Ship whereas people the world over recognize the name Harvard with no preamble or addendum at all.

Employing litmus tests on who can attend graduate school (affecting careers) is a wee bit more serious than placing restrictions on who can be a Boy Scout or a Scoutmaster.

Oh, really? So it doesn't matter whether we discriminate against children and youth, as long as we let everyone into graduate school? It doesn't matter if a person is denied the opportunity to be a Scoutmaster because the Boy Scouts of America say he's a potential child molester in spite of the fact that most molesters are not gay, or atheists, or Unitarians? That's not going to get around the community and hurt his reputation? None of that affects careers?

Cannot a conservative find a university that will admit him or her to a graduate program?

We have yet to see one case of ideological discrimination brought to court. Let someone make a case instead of sobbing on George Will's shoulder. That's what other minorities have had to do.

Second, the Boy Scouts have been successfully sued more than once when a Scoutmaster molests a kid. No, that doesn't mean that all homosexuals are child molesters, but it does given them reason to be concerned about kids' safety. It isn't unreasonable to restrict who can be a Scoutmaster. As for gay scouts themselves, that's not as clear-cut.

If the Boy Scouts were really all that concerned about the profile of potential child molesters, they would ban men from being Scoutmasters, as there is considerable evidence that men sexually abuse at a higher rate than women do. But that would be dumb. Just as dumb as discriminating against gay men, atheists and Unitarians.

The ban against gay Scouts is pretty clear-cut to me: the BSA wants to cut them out of the herd. This is a private club. No pansies allowed.