Scout’s Honor, They’re Picking on the Wrong 2 Tykes

I took one look at the Randall twins in the paper Friday morning and knew that the Cub Scouts were messing with the wrong dudes.

William and Michael, the 9-year-old sons of James and Valerie Randall of Anaheim Hills, looked resolute, fearless, resourceful, intelligent and pretty damn confident sitting there on their beds.

At 5 feet, 3 inches and about 160 pounds, the boys are pretty husky for 9. In short, they appear capable of taking on an entire Scout pack. Sort of like Rambos with homework.

And take on an entire Scout pack is what they’re about to do.

In a squabble that has the Donahue show written all over it, the boys’ father has gotten a temporary restraining order to prevent the county chapter of the Boy Scouts of America from expelling the boys from the Cub Scouts over their religious views. Turns out the boys don’t really have any religious views, except for the negative kind. They’ve sized up religion on their own and decided they can’t buy the program.

As a result, they’ve been refusing to mouth the word God , as in “do my duty to God,” which is in the Scout oath. They might have coasted through that with some lip-synching, but as Wolf Scouts who want their Bear badges, the boys must fulfill a requirement that involves religious belief.

That’s where the twins have drawn the line. They won’t do it, prompting scouting officials to say the boys’ Scout careers will be stunted. Push came to shove and, to make a long story short, the Scouts decided that the boys don’t represent the organization’s ideals. In effect, an attorney for the Scouts said, the boys have expelled themselves by their disavowal of God.

The attorney, George A. Davidson, said belief in God is mandatory for Scouts. Every Scout has been taking an oath to serve God and country since the group began in 1911, he added.

Davidson didn’t say how many of those 8- and 9-year-old Scouts since 1911 really knew what it meant when they took the oath.

The boys’ father, a lawyer in Orange, said he is backing his sons to the hilt.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most serious, this is a 12,” he said.

If necessary, he said, he’ll take the case to the state Supreme Court, if not further.

Randall said he and his wife have long known that they have a couple of independent thinkers on their hands. When they were 5, William went up to a stranger who was smoking and told her that she was not only fat, but a smoker who was going to die unless she quit. His parents made him apologize.

Later, unbeknown to their parents, the boys got in the habit of not saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school because of the reference to God. After the school principal mentioned it to the Randalls, they asked their sons about it. Randall said he told them he’d back them 100% if they could validate their position on not saying the pledge.

When they started producing evidence like the Bill of Rights and stuff about freedom of religion, Randall said he decided that they had won their case.

Randall said his sons don’t want to drop out of the Scouts, because they enjoy the organization and are patriotic kids. The boys are interested in politics and world events, and the family has flown a flag during the Gulf War and also flies it on holidays, he said.

“This is nothing we’re getting a kick out of,” Randall said. “I want to make that clear. This is not a joke, dammit. I fought in Vietnam. I saw too many people blown away for the right to be different, and I’ll defend my sons’ rights as well as my own.”

Randall said he has explained to his sons that they may get chided over the Scout dispute. “They got some flak at school. Two boys made comments about why didn’t they believe in God, and they said because they don’t want to, and that was the end of the discussion.”

Randall said the Scout issue has united the boys as few other things have. “They know what they want and they don’t take any guff from anybody and they stand up for what they believe in,” he said.

Randall conceded that his sons, which are he and his wife’s only kids, take things seriously. “They probably don’t know enough about Nintendo,” he said. “We tell them all the time to be little boys, to knock off the serious stuff, and they don’t want to do it. Because of their size, they’ve always been bigger than other kids, so they feel like they’re little adults.

“So sometimes they have a hard time adjusting to what they call ‘little kids,’ which are just kids their own age.”

What a wacky world.

A couple observations: First, the Randall twins sound like just the kind of kids the Scouts should be looking for. They also sound like two of the more interesting 9-year-olds I’ve heard of in many a moon, and I wish Jim and Valerie the best of luck.

But the question before the house: Do you kick two 9-year-olds out of Boy Scouts because they won’t pledge an oath to God? Can these kids undermine the 80-year heritage of the Scouts because they’re honest about their religious skepticism?

What would God do? After all, he’s the one taking the heat from the boys. Would he vote to kick them out of Scouts? Or would he chuckle and say, ‘Boys will be boys!’

I didn’t contact the boys to get their view of things. I figured I might as well wait and catch them on Donahue.