by KYW's Steve Tawa

The Philadelphia area chapter of the Boy Scouts of America  is now on official notice that its longstanding lease with the City of Philadelphia is expiring.

City solicitor Romy Diaz had given the "Cradle of Liberty Council" of the Scouts until Monday to renounce the Scouts' national policy against homosexuals, or pay market rate rent ($200,000 a year) for its headquarters on city-owned land, or find a new home (see previous story).

The Council has been paying a dollar a year rent for the property, at 22nd and Winter Streets (above), near the Franklin Institute, since 1928.

The local branch tried to address the anti-gay national bylaw in 2003, but the national council threatened to revoke its charter. Then, two years ago, the Cradle of Liberty Council wrote a non-discrimination statement, but city lawyers called that "ambiguous."
 
Solicitor Diaz acknowledges that the US Supreme Court has ruled that the national Boy Scouts, as a private organization, had the right to exclude homosexuals from its ranks. But he says the city "will not subsidize that discrimination by passing on the costs to the people of Philadelphia."

By giving notice now, Diaz says, he like to line up alternative tenants for the property by next June. The local council is considering its legal options, and perhaps hoping for a change in attitude, when the Nutter administration takes over.

But the scouts may not get a receptive ear from the incoming Nutter administration. Before Michael Nutter left City Council to run for mayor, he was among the majority in the 16-1 vote last May to evict the scouts unless the local chapter renounced the BSA's policy against gays.