RATS TO THE BOY SCOUT CONTROVERSY

Are you a biological error?

Or are you trying to stop Dr. Laura from saying that, based on her religious beliefs, certain people are biological errors?

Are you “morally straight,” as a Boy Scout should be?

Or do you know a former Scout who may not qualify for membership anymore, but he’s still your good friend and not some biological error?

Hey, did you notice that Will & Grace, a show about a gay guy and his female straight friend, got the Emmy for best comedy television series?

If I am rambling, it’s for good reason. I am collecting donations for United Way, and in Orlando, that means explaining to people why the agency wants to make sure that all of the area’s 90 social-service providers do not discriminate based on race, sex, ethnicity and, yes, sexual orientation.

This has caused quite a ruckus because the Scouts organization receives contributions from United Way, which collects from big businesses that have corporate policies against discrimination. That would seem to conflict with the Scouts’ national policy that does not allow homosexuals to volunteer as Scout leaders.

Let me be clear in a very non-subliminal way: Rats!

As a United Way supporter, I feel like a cross between Rodney Dangerfield, the comedian, and Rodney King, the Los Angeles man whose brutal police beating eventually sparked a riot: Something about respecting others and getting along comes to mind.

I never would have thought that tolerance was something one had to explain to a predominantly Christian community. Wasn’t it Jesus who said love your neighbor and let he who is without sin cast the first stone?

Doesn’t the Bible tell us to punish the sin and love the sinner?

I won’t quote chapter and verse. There are plenty of people who could do that, each one using a biblical quote to explain his or her opinion about homosexuality, con or pro. Each one explaining why I am wrong.

Whatever.

Let Dr. Laura Schlessinger figure this one out. Radio Mouth started her new television talk show this week after months of protests from people who feel that her statements on her radio program about homosexuality are, to put it mildly, unkind. Statements such as: “If you’re gay or lesbian, it’s a biological error.”

I don’t know where we go from this slippery slope. Do we fight Dr. Laura’s “fighting words”?

Or do we fight the gay lobby’s insistence that a private organization, such as the Scouts, must be open to people whose lifestyle may not be acceptable to certain parents?

Do we have to fight at all?

Tolerance doesn’t mean accepting the unacceptable, but it should mean being able to talk about differences of opinion without casting aspersions on those who think differently.

And it should mean being able to laugh from time to time about one’s life, which brings me to Will & Grace executive producer Max Mutchinick who, holding the Emmy statuette of a nude woman, quipped, “She is so beautiful. As a gay man, I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I think I’ve finally met a girl I want to sleep with.”

In a column last Wednesday, I mistakenly implied that Citizens for a Sound

Economy was among several stealth organizations that ran political-issue advertisements on television during the primary-election season. In fact, the 40,000-member Florida chapter of Citizens for a Sound Economy is a non-profit, non-partisan, free-market group that ran some ads in South Florida in 1999 but did not run any ads in Central Florida.

COLUMN: Opinion