Quarrels About God and House Paint Are Risky at Best

Pride Goeth Before a Fall.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall.

Officials from the Boy Scouts of America and the Laguna Beach Design Review Board should both be forced to write that 98 more times on the blackboard. Maybe then they will realize the foolishness of their ways.

The Scouts and the review board made the papers Friday, both on the losing end of the score in games they didn’t need to play.

In Orange County, a Superior Court judge ruled that the Scouts can’t keep 10-year-old twins Michael and William Randall out of the organization just because they don’t believe in God.

In federal court, a judge ruled that Denise and Nick Karagozian can proceed with their $1-million lawsuit against the Design Review Board, which stopped them from moving into a new house two years ago because the couple wanted to paint it a different shade of white than that prescribed by the board.

The Randalls and the Karagozians have at least one thing in common, and it used to be something we celebrated in this country: individualism.

Come on, don’t give me that malarkey about how the 10-year-old twins were going to undermine the historic traditions of the Cub Scouts because they wouldn’t say the oath to God and were outspoken about their religious skepticism. And don’t tell me that they shouldn’t be allowed in Scouting unless they believe in God.

As Judge Richard O. Frazee Sr. quite correctly pointed out, the Scouts’ adherence to any kind of religious framework for local den meetings is marginal at best. Most common-sense adults will concede that a boy’s religious credo is hardly solidified by age 9 or 10, no matter what his parents think, and to deprive a kid of the Scouting experience solely for that reason is ridiculous.

If someone joins the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and then shows up and denounces God at the meetings, I’ll side with those who want to expel them. But the Cub Scouts? That’s about learning responsibility and having fun.

As one of the young Scout witnesses for the Randalls testified during the trial, he thought “duty to God” meant “to do all your chores.”

For that, the Randall twins were blackballed?

I hate to sound like a know-it-all, but let’s face it, that’s my job.

Besides, wouldn’t you rather hear “I told you so” from a nice guy like me than from some pompous jerk?

So, as God is my witness, I remind you that I warned the Boy Scouts of America more than a year ago not to take on the Randall twins. One of those kids would have been enough, but twins?

I tried to tell the Scouts they were overmatched by these kids. I described them as “resolute, fearless, resourceful, intelligent and pretty damn confident” as they prepared to take the Scouts to court.

I’d be applauding the Randall twins even more for their tenacity and independent thinking except for the recurring fear that perhaps that’s how Dana Rohrabacher got started. But that’s another story.

Anyway, I implored the Scout leadership to get together for coffee with James Randall, the boys’ lawyer-father, and resolve the issue. I suggested the boys could fulfill their religious requirement by writing an essay on various religions of the world and why they were skeptical about a Supreme Being.

Randall said at the time he’d have been happy to resolve things. Instead, the Scouts got their backs up over a well-meaning but largely ineffectual and minuscule aspect of their operation. Now, a year later, they’ve lost the case, and for what?

As for the Design Review Board, this has been a group just waiting for the right lawsuit to come along.

They might still beat down the Karagozians’ challenge in court. But if they lose, or even if they have to settle to preempt the possibility of losing, was it worth it?

Will it be worth ponying up just because the Karagozians wanted to paint their house eggshell white instead of sandstone?

Somewhere along the way, it would behoove groups like the Scouts and the Design Review Board to learn the difference between anarchists and people with minds of their own. There may be evil forces in our midst, but they weren’t embodied in the Randall twins or the Karagozians.

All together now:

Pride Goeth Before a Fall.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall.

CREDIT WHERE DUE: It’s nice to know this column has a literary following. Last Sunday I referred to Joan Didion’s image of the “center not holding” while writing about civil unrest in her 1968 book “Slouching Toward Bethlehem.” I made it sound as if Didion had originated the thought, while in fact Didion had properly noted that she borrowed the words from William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.” Numerous readers caught my gaffe, with some even sending copies of the poem.