Agnostic Scouts Pack Grievance Off to Court

Freedom of religion means freedom from religion, say twin 9-year-old Cub Scouts who asked a judge Tuesday to prevent their pack from expelling them for refusing to say the word God in the Scouts’ Oath.

William and Michael Randall, represented by their attorney father, say the Boy Scouts of America should be prohibited from discriminating against nonbelievers under state public accommodation laws.

Attorneys for the Boy Scouts, however, say the issue is not freedom of religion but freedom of association. They argue that Boy Scouts are a private-membership organization which has since its inception in 1911 required all Scouts to recognize a “duty to God.” As a private entity, the Scouts should be allowed to restrict membership to boys who accept its tenets, the attorneys say.

“Is the NAACP not entitled to provide its services only to black people? . . .” asked the Scouts’ attorney, George A. Davidson of New York. “Must Jewish organizations admit neo-Nazi members?”

Davidson also produced sworn statements from the parents of other boys in Cub Scout Pack 519 of Anaheim who say that the Randall twins’ refusal to recognize God would undermine the Boy Scout program.

In declarations filed with the court, the parents said they believe “that Scouting should be limited to those who are willing to express agreement with Scouting’s basic values, including recognition of a duty to God.”

Noting that the outcome could have broad implications, Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard O. Frazee Sr. promised to issue a decision within 10 days.

The Randall twins say they think God “sort of sounds like a make-believe character.”

They joined the Cub Scouts in Culver City three years ago and said they have never uttered the word God in the Scout’s Oath and never had any trouble until their new den mother in Anaheim asked them whether they are atheists.

The boys’ father, James Grafton Randall, alleges that Scout officials eventually told him that the twins could not be Cub Scouts if they refused to recognize “a duty to God.”

Davidson insists that the boys were never expelled from their pack but only told that they could not advance without completing the religious requirements.

“There is no evidence in this record that the boys ever refused to say the Cub Scout pledge or that the organization ever excluded the boys from Scouting,” Davidson told the court.

While the Boy Scouts insist that a boy recognize a higher deity, nothing is specified about which god a boy must worship. That decision is left to the family, so Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists may all become Scouts.

Then why not nonbelievers? James Randall asked.

“I have no idea what God means,” he said, “and apparently the Boy Scouts don’t, either, because they don’t want to define what God is. . . .

“Nowhere does it say that if you don’t believe in God, we can kick you out,” he said.

Moreover, Randall said, Scouts distribute leaflets through the public schools, inviting all boys to join and making no mention of religion.

At the heart of the legal battle is whether the Boy Scouts are a public entity barred from religious discrimination by California’s Unruh Act.

In oral arguments, Randall noted that the Boy Scouts of America meet in schools and churches, have a $52-million annual budget and receive up to 30% of their money from the United Way.

In Orange County alone, he said, the Scouts have 57 full-time employees and 37 part-time staff members.

“The very uniforms these boys are wearing were bought in a J.C. Penney store, which is hardly the insignia of a private club,” Randall said.

Randall compared the requirement that a Scout acknowledge God to religious oaths, which are unconstitutional. In a 1961 case of a notary public fired for refusing to take an oath to God, Randall told the judge, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote: “It was largely to escape religious test oaths and declarations that a great many of the early colonists left Europe.”

If the Boy Scouts are not bound by civil rights laws and are permitted to discriminate against nonbelievers, Randall said, they could decide to exclude racial minorities or the disabled.

Davidson objected, noting that Boy Scout troops were integrated long before civil rights laws were passed and that they have extensive programs for disabled children.

Davidson said it would be unreasonable to apply public accommodation laws to a volunteer den mother holding private Cub Scout meetings in her own home. He quoted from another Supreme Court decision, in which the court noted that “freedom to associate . . . plainly includes the freedom not to associate.”

After the hearing, Michael said the Boy Scouts’ attorney “got kind of boring after a while.”

“They are saying they have the right to discriminate against kids who don’t believe in God,” Michael added. “I think that is wrong.”