Tying The Boy Scouts In Knots

By William A. Henry III.

Most Americans believe that the Boy Scouts stand for the best in national values, an image the group achieved in part by shrewdly staying out of the ever heated debate over what those values are. For 81 years, while the organization inducted 83 million youths, the popular image of a scout has been benign and nonpartisan: a polite teenager helping an old lady cross the street. Chartered by Congress and widely sponsored by schools, police and fire departments, scouting has carefully marketed itself as a community-service institution, worthy of donations and removed from controversy.

But a new image is emerging. In Illinois, California and Florida, children are fighting exclusion from the Boy Scouts based on their being atheist, agnostic or female. An assistant scoutmaster in California is battling an expulsion imposed because he is gay. And Boy Scout officials are rewriting popular mythology, if not history, to assert that the scouts are free to discriminate because they were always a private club rather than a public resource.

Already the contretemps are causing some groups to rethink their relationship with scouting. In Hinsdale, Ill., where Mark Welsh, 8, was barred from Cub Scouts because he is an agnostic, the local school system has temporarily halted the distribution of recruitment flyers. In Miami, where Margo Mankes, 8, was expelled by the regional council of Cub Scouts because she is a girl, her home troop has kept her on as an unofficial member.

Numerically the organization is in little immediate danger. After a dip in the '70s, membership surged during the Reagan era. Today 4.3 million young people belong to Cub Scouts and its precursor Tigers (for boys 6 to 10), Boy Scouts (boys 11 to 17) and Explorers (both sexes, 14 to 20). The two younger groups must swear loyalty to God and country. Explorers take no oath, and thus the 1.2 million-member branch has largely kept clear of courtroom battles but has weakened scouting's claim that religious faith is central to its mission.

An even clearer affirmation of the group's appeal is that its court adversaries want to join in, not shut it down. Mark Welsh persisted in suing despite his father Elliott's cautions because, he says, "there's things I want to do in Cub Scouts -- build bonfires, go camping, pool parties." His 15-month-old case went to trial last week, and Mark gained a psychic merit badge in media mania. Testifying was "scary," he said. "I mostly learned about news cameras."

Michael and William Randall, twin nine-year-olds from Anaheim Hills, Calif., have been just as stubborn. They were excluded from a Cub Scout pack in February because they could not, as atheists, pledge duty to God. One of their attorneys is their father James, but he emphasizes that the legal battle was the twins' idea, not his. He calls the lawsuit "the kiss of death." Says his son Michael: "I just want to be a member of an organization and not have to say the word God and not have an organization force me to say it. They're not a private organization. They're public. And if they're public, they can't exclude people who don't believe in God."

The key legal question is how private the scouts are. When Margo Mankes' attorney alleged the scouts had violated state and local laws against sex discrimination, Boy Scouts of America attorney George Davidson countered, "Congress has authorized the B.S.A. to maintain a program for boys. It's not open to a state or local government to change their policies." But the congressional charter undercuts scouting's additional claims to be private, so, in discussing the case, spokesman Blake Lewis says, "The B.S.A. wasn't founded by Congress. We see this as a larger issue of our constitutional rights as a private organization."

The boundary between private association and the public right to free access has been one of the hardest to draw. Lawyers targeting the scouts rely in part on public-accommodation statutes, which were originally used to regulate restaurants, hotels and the like. In recent years the laws have been applied , to groups such as the Jaycees, which women argued -- successfully -- was not a private club but a career-enhancement group.

Mankes' attorney makes similar arguments. "The scouts are training boys to be successful," Mark Rubin declares. "The Girl Scouts' purpose is to make women better homemakers. There is no alternative as good as the Boy Scouts."

Timothy Curran, 29, already had his chance for happy memories of scouting. Now a videotape editor for a local TV news program in Los Angeles, Curran joined a Berkeley troop in 1975 and quickly progressed to Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster. In 1981 he was expelled because officials had seen a newspaper photograph of him taking a male date to his high school senior prom. Curran was a student at UCLA when he was banned. He sued immediately; a decade later, the case is still unresolved. While an antigay posture might seem predictable for scouting, Curran argues that the organization's literature is silent on the issue and that the manual for scoutmasters specifically prohibits discussion of sexual matters.

In all these controversies the motives of the Boy Scouts, and in some cases their challengers, involve more than the legal niceties. Curran, for example, is by any reasonable definition a gay activist. For their part, the scouts are tending to business interests. In the majority of scout troops, for example, the religious component is negligible and almost any professed faith is welcome, from Methodism to Zen. But about 30% of scouts are sponsored by church groups, and those partners would probably take a dim view if scouting suddenly made belief in God optional. On the issue of female membership, many young boys might balk at enrollment if scouting lost its exclusionary mystique, and the Girl Scouts would surely not welcome the competition.

When it comes to gay participation, the overt concern is about role models, while the unspoken correlative is fear of child molestation. In practice, an acknowledged homosexual is an unlikely molester, if only because parents would be watchful, while married, middle-aged scoutmasters have been known to transgress.

The silliest pretense is that the Boy Scouts do not now number many present or future atheists and homosexuals among their members. Curran was gay and a scout. Elliott Welsh evolved agnostic views shortly after leaving the scouts. Their participation in scouting did not keep them from choosing their lives and values, nor did their participation destroy scouting. What is most troubling in the Boy Scouts' new emphasis on privacy is the hint that the group serves as a retreat for parents who dislike the diverse and tolerant world of today. But that is the world their children will grow up to live in tomorrow.

With reporting by Steve Hawk/Los Alamitos and Leslie Whitaker/New York