I hereby declare that you, my reader, are prohibited from adding to the coffers of the City of Madison, Wisconsin. If this declaration sounds a bit strange, it is meant only as a pasquinade of the Madison City Council's recent unanimous decision that a private Independence Day festival to which it gives modest funds cannot raise money for another private organization: the Boy Scouts of America.

Each Fourth of July, the Rhythm and Booms fireworks show and concert raises thousands of dollars for an array of private local charities. Last year, the Boy Scouts took in $2,500 as hundreds of Scouts volunteered at the event. This year, the Scouts can volunteer, but they can't benefit from the fundraising because, in the words of City Alder Steve Holtzman, it "would be sending a very unfortunate message to the community."

Actually, Alder Holtzman misjudged. The city council decision itself was an exceedingly unfortunate message to the nation that Madison, Wisconsin prefers the far extremes of political correctness above moral straightness.

Indeed, this most odious coercion by the city council was a response to the Boy Scouts' policy prohibiting homosexual members and leaders, a policy upheld as a constitutionally protected right by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000.

Two circumstances would justify a forced exclusion of the Boy Scouts from fundraising at Rhythm and Booms. First, the Boy Scouts could be an anti-homosexual hate group. Second, the city could be the primary sponsor of the event and correctly tell the hate group that it cannot partake of fundraising activities.

Neither of these are actual circumstances, though the Madison City Council acts as though they are. The Boy Scouts are as far from being a hate group as the American Civil Liberties Union is from defending the Scouts in a lawsuit case; the Boy Scouts teach respect for all people and the slogan remains "Do a good turn daily." And the City of Madison is one co-sponsor among several for Rhythm and Booms.

Nevertheless, the City of Madison's $60,000 contribution to the event (of a total $600,000 event cost) is newly conditioned by a ferocious condemnation of America's finest youth organization.

For Independence Day, when nothing could be more American that the Boy Scouts, the City of Madison will be exploding fireworks upon a Scout's honor. Thankfully, that honor is sacred, and they cannot actually destroy it. But outrageously, the vote by the Madison City Council to force an exclusion of the Boy Scouts from the Rhythm and Booms fundraising activities was unanimous.

Every member of the Madison City Council deserves the repudiation of the citizen and the voter. It may not come in any large measure, for Madison is a liberal city.

So liberal in fact, that even the Four Lakes Boy Scout Council of the greater Madison area asked the national Boy Scouts of America to lift its ban on homosexuals. That request came in the aftermath of a decision by the United Way of Dane County in 2001 to cut off thousands of dollars in funding to the Four Lakes Council Boy Scouts.

This latest injury by the Madison City Council will only increase the pressure on the local Boy Scouts to seek the ways of political correctness. This is a tragedy in the making, not only in Madison, but also in every major city in America where it isn't any longer acceptable to adhere to codes of honor and traditional moral character.

Madison bears in vain the name of that founding father who once observed, "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

These are gradual and silent encroachments by the powerful against the Boy Scouts. Unless a greater power is asserted by freedom loving Americans, the Boy Scouts will become the final casualty of political correctness. Much is at stake.

Hans Zeiger is a Seattle Times columnist and conservative activist. He is president of the Scout Honor Coalition and a student at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

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