Twin Scouts Win Round in Fight Against <i> God</i> in Oath : Courts: Judge rules that they can’t be expelled for bucking rule. But pack meeting ends before it starts when boys show up with their attorney father and the media horde he invited.

Twin Cub Scouts who refused to say the word God in the Scout’s Oath won a preliminary court battle Thursday that will allow them to remain in their pack while their civil rights lawsuit is being fought.

But the two boys’ celebration ended abruptly that same night when they appeared at a Cub Scout meeting at an Anaheim Hills school to receive merit badges. Before the meeting even began, it dissolved into a shouting match between their father and the Scoutmaster, who finally told all the parents and children to leave because he said the event had turned into a media circus.

“This is absolute absurdity tonight,” boomed James Grafton Randall, the attorney-father of the 9-year-old twins, William and Michael Randall, as he walked out of the school. “My boys worked hard to get their merit badges. Now they’re saying if you come to this meeting, we’ll take our marbles and go home.” In granting the twins a preliminary injunction, Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard O. Frazee Sr. ruled that the boys may not be expelled from the Cub Scouts or be required to swear a “duty to God” until their case is decided.

The Randall boys had been thrilled when they heard they had won the restraining order Thursday afternoon. “My dad called on the car phone on the way to my piano lesson,” said William.

William “yelled and screamed,” reported Michael. “He almost made my mom crash into a car because he was so excited.”

But when the boys and their father showed up Thursday night at a Scout meeting at Crescent Intermediate School, they had invited the press, so about 20 reporters and photographers tried to follow them into the cafeteria for the meeting. The Scoutmaster called the elder Randall in and told him to ask the media to leave, saying he was turning the Scout meeting into “a circus.”

“A circus? You made it a circus!” Randall yelled, refusing to go in without the media. “This is a public place and a public group and the press has a right to be here!”

The Scoutmaster then said: “Fine! Then everyone will leave.”

The disappointed Scouts, dressed in their uniforms, and their parents--about 75 people in all--folded up their chairs and walked to their cars. Security officers were called in to disband the press.

Most of the parents refused to talk about what happened.

But one mother who left the meeting with her son said that the Randall boys should have quit if they didn’t like the Scout rules.

“There are strict rules. If you don’t want to say the things required, go find another group to join,” she said.

“If this is for the sake of those (Randall) boys, they why are they near tears?” another mother asked.

The twin boys indeed were red-faced and upset after the meeting disbanded.

“They want us to say the G-o-d word and I don’t want to say it,” Michael said. “The Boy Scouts are going to have to learn!” he shouted.

Randall said Thursday night he would seek a court order as soon as possible to get the meeting resumed.

“A bunch of adults have messed it up for a bunch of little kids,” he said.

The Randalls, who live in Anaheim Hills, had argued in a lawsuit filed in February that the Boy Scouts of America is a public entity that should be prohibited by state public accommodations laws from discriminating against members on religious grounds.

But the Boy Scouts’ lawyer, George A. Davidson of New York, argued that Boy Scouts is a private group whose members should have the freedom not to associate with boys who reject Scouting’s moral tenets.

“In our view, the order interferes with the constitutional right to association of the members of the Orange County (Boy Scouts) and the den and the pack, and we will recommend to our client that an appeal be made,” Davidson said Thursday.

In court earlier this month, Davidson had argued that forcing private groups to abide by all anti-discrimination laws would have ludicrous consequences.

“Is the NAACP (National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People) not entitled to provide its services only to black people?” Davidson asked the judge. “ . . . Must Jewish organizations admit neo-Nazi members?”

James Randall claimed the twins, who have said they think God “sounds like a make-believe character,” were expelled from the Cub Scouts Den 4, Pack 519 of Anaheim when officials discovered they did not believe in God.

The Boy Scouts have denied that the boys were ousted, saying they were told only that they could not advance to the Bear rank without completing the religious requirement.

In a written decision issued Thursday in Santa Ana, Frazee found that without an injunction, the Boy Scouts “will act in violation of the rights of the (Randalls) which would make a judgment in (the twins’) favor ineffectual.”

Frazee ordered that the Boy Scouts may not exclude the twins provided they register and pay dues, must allow them to advance in rank to Bear status without completing any religious requirements, and may not require the boys to say the word God in any pledge or vow.