The Region - News from July 24, 1985

Former Eagle Scout and self-avowed homosexual Timothy Curran’s discrimination suit against the Boy Scouts of America must go to trial, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge Jr. ruled. Breckenridge denied both Curran’s and the Scouts’ motions for summary judgment to end the four-year-old case without trial, noting that a jury or trial judge must decide such issues as whether the organization is a private or public one and whether Curran’s exclusion violates state or federal laws banning discrimination. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert I. Weil had dismissed the case in 1981, deciding that Boy Scouts of America was a private organization that could legally exercise its membership policy excluding homosexuals and atheists. The case was reinstated by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in 1983. Curran was 19 at the time the Scouts learned that he was homosexual. He was too old to be a Scout but wanted to stay as an adult leader.