Scout's honor: The Boy Scouts are under relentless legal assault because they are an affront to the age.

Mr. Kontorovich is a writer living in New York City.

FOR more than eighty years, the Boy Scouts of America have sent young boys on arduous, fortnight-long hikes; taught them to survive alone in the wilderness; and guided them through countless other physical and mental challenges that have helped transform them into mature, responsible men. But now the organization faces a challenge greater than all of these: Can it survive the 1990s?

Recently, a New Jersey appellate court forced the Boy Scouts to give a scoutmaster post to James Dale, a gay activist and editor at POZ, a magazine for HIV-positive people. The divided bench overturned an old Scout policy of not allowing "avowed homosexuals" to serve as scoutmasters. What is particularly shocking about the opinion is its unabashed political expression. The court found that the Boy Scouts cannot discriminate against anyone, on any basis, because the organization is a "public accommodation," like restaurants and parks. Actually, the judges admitted that it wasn't much like a public accommodation as defined by the law, but they held that such limited definitions "would frustrate our goal of eradicating 'the cancer of discrimination' in New Jersey."

New Jersey is but one front in the nationwide attack on the Boy Scouts of America. Illinois was the venue of two recent defeats for the Scouts. Last year, a Chicago court ordered the reinstatement of a gay scoutmaster on the grounds of employment discrimination, despite the fact that the position is voluntary and unpaid. In February, the City of Chicago severed all its ties with 28 Scout troops, to settle a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU claimed that the arrangements with the Scouts violated the separation of church and state. This is an odd contention given that BSA is not a church, or a religious organization of any kind. It is a nonsectarian group that simply insists that its members honor some sort of divinity in accordance with the dictates of their conscience. But instead of preparing to fight, several other municipalities have pre-emptively thrown the Scouts overboard.

The ACLU, captivated by vague emanations from the penumbra of the establishment clause, has completely forgotten the more concrete First Amendment right of free association -- the right to fraternize with whomever one wants, a crucial underpinning of civil society.

This is a principle the California Supreme Court would do well to remember when it rules in two suits currently before it. In one, a pair of twins from Anaheim insist on retaining their membership in the Scouts despite their refusal to recite the Scout's oath, which acknowledges the existence of God. In effect, the twins' parents and supporters are using the courts to change the core credo of a voluntary organization. The California judges will also decide another suit brought by a gay scoutmaster. Arguments in similar cases will soon be heard by D.C.'s Human Rights Commission.

At this rate, it's no wonder that girls are starting to sue, because the Boy Scouts, by definition, discriminate against them. The California Supreme Court is considering discrimination charges brought by a teenage girl who thinks the Boy Scouts' exclusion of females is unfair because Girl Scout activities aren't as much fun. A similar suit has been filed in Florida.

The wave of litigation against the Scouts is not ultimately about the rights of gays, or atheists, or females. It is a challenge to the BSA's right to exist in its present form. Such an attack should not be surprising; if anything, it's odd that the Boy Scouts have hung on for so long.

The organization is a holdover from a vanished era. The Boy Scout Handbook still bears Norman Rockwell paintings of scouting activities, offered without a trace of irony. Even the BSA's by-laws talk about "character building." The Scouts' charter still calls on leaders "to teach [the boys] patriotism," and members still take an oath "to do my duty to God and my country."

The BSA has always been an apolitical, nonpartisan organization. But today its leaders and lawyers must defend its membership policies by saying it stands for "conservative moral views." The BSA's policies have not changed significantly since it was chartered by Congress in 1916. What has changed is the underlying society.

Endorsing specific, non-negotiable values has become a conservative position. The existence of the Scouts irritates the ideologues of modernity -- and so hordes of litigators, the antibodies of a dissolute culture, have responded by attacking the foreign body. If the courts find in favor of the plaintiffs in the undecided cases, the meaning of the Boy Scouts will be greatly eroded. The organization will become the Gay Godless Girl/Boy Scouts of America. It is only the right to restrict membership and insist that members follow rules that can give a civic group definition.

In that light, consider the plaintiffs' order of battle: the ACLU; the Lambda Legal Defense Fund; the Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays; and the American Atheists. Yes, the American Atheists: united by common disbeliefs.

Fundamentally, it is meaninglessness that lies at the core of the attack on the Boy Scouts. This is a competition not between rival sets of values but between the idea of values and an antinomian moral vacuousness. The comments of plaintiffs and judges show that the intent is not just to destroy the Scouts; it is to deconstruct them.

For example, the Scout's oath has a clause about "keeping myself . . . morally straight," a provision the BSA says is on its face incompatible with homosexual activity. "There is nothing in [the Scout's oath] about homosexuality," says Timothy Curran, the California gay seeking reinstatement as a scoutmaster. "It says you must be 'morally straight' but you can define that any way you want." Which is precisely what New Jersey's jurisprudes chose to do.

There are tough days ahead for the Scouts, but they vow that they are in it for the long haul; all parties agree that the U.S. Supreme Court will finally have to rule on these issues. Until then, how can one support the Scouts? Perhaps one can give their enemies a taste of their own medicine. Religious believers should join the American Atheists in droves and introduce Sunday Mass, daily prayers to Mecca, and the donning of tefillin at every meeting.

But no, that's not right -- it wouldn't be in keeping with the Scouts' spirit of fair play. Instead, the Scouts need donations to fund their ongoing appeals and fill the gap left by cowardly towns and cities.