Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
One year ago, as reported in the March 6, 2002 edition of Liberal News & Commentary, Rob Sherman Advocacy began a campaign to get the 19th Judicial Circuit of the Illinois state court system to drop its sponsorship of their Boy Scout (see lower half of page 3 of link) Troop #19. Earlier this month, that pressure from Rob Sherman Advocacy paid off when the 19th Circuit Court announced that it had allowed its Boy Scout charter to lapse as of March 1, 2003, thus disbanding Troop 19.
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The 19th Circuit Court serves Lake County and McHenry County in Illinois. RS Advocacy asked that the Court drop its sponsorship of its Boy Scout Troop 19 because the government should not be operating, or expending public funds to operate, a discriminatory private club.
Boy Scouts of America has a policy of "No Atheists allowed" and "No Homosexuals allowed." Atheists and homosexuals in Lake and McHenry Counties pay taxes at the same rate that other citizens in those counties pay them. Article VIII, "Finance", Section 1 "General Provisions," Paragraph A states: "Public funds, property or credit shall be used only for public purposes." Boy Scouts is a private club, so it doesn't qualify for public funding, particularly when law-abiding citizens are excluded from the program on account of creed (theological perspective) or sexual orientation.
On March 1st, the 19th Judicial Circuit disbanded Boy Scout Troop 19 by allowing its charter to lapse.
Several newspapers in the metropolitan area reported that the 19th Circuit had dropped its Boy Scout charter in response to a request from the Illinois Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and that Rob Sherman supposedly had nothing, whatsoever, to do with it, despite this headline and article on the front page of the March 5, 2002, edition of the News-Sun newspaper last year:
The ACLU is a fine organization, but as far as I knew, they had nothing to do with the decision by the 19th Circuit to drop the Scout troop. On Friday, I contacted my good friend, Ed Yohnka, Communications Director of the Illinois Chapter of the ACLU, to ask him about the newspaper article claims. Ed told me that the ACLU is pleased to take credit for anything that they get involved in, but as far as he and the ACLU were concerned, this was strictly a Rob Sherman Advocacy victory. Ed said that he had been contacted, last year, by an official of the 19th Circuit, who requested some documents pertaining to the issue. Ed provided those documents, but Ed says that that was the extent of the ACLU's involvement. Other than that, the ACLU was not involved.
This is yet another reason to continue to like the ACLU. Unlike some other organizations that I've dealt with in the past, which have claimed RS Advocacy victories for themselves, ACLU does enough good things on their own that they don't need to go around claiming my victories as their own. According to Ed, the claim that the ACLU got the 19th Circuit to drop Troop 19 was made to the newspapers by a court official, not by the ACLU. Thanks, Ed Yohnka and the ACLU, for all the fine work that you do and for not claiming RS Advocacy projects and victories as your own.
Coming later this week: More news about RS Advocacy victories and more endorsements for next week's local elections.
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
7410
Buffalo Grove, IL 60089-7410
A post office box is used
because
the street address uses a curb mail box,
which is not secure.
Telephone: (847) 870-0700
Fax: (847) 870-1156
E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com