Conservatives in O.C. Come to Scouts’ Aid

A group of Orange County conservatives has rallied around the Boy Scouts of America by seeking a boycott of two companies that stopped contributing to the organization because it does not admit gays or atheists.

The move has prompted an Anaheim Hills lawyer, whose 10-year-old atheist sons were kicked out of Scouting, to accuse local Republican elected officials of trying to make Boy Scouts a pawn on their traditional-values stage.

Scouts officials, meanwhile, said that they are caught in the middle of a potential political battle but that they are not rejecting the support of the conservative group.

The group, led by members of the Orange County congressional delegation, last month began a petition drive against two San Francisco-based companies through a newspaper advertisement. The companies, Levi Strauss Co. and Wells Fargo Co., yanked their donations this summer.

Their action comes in the wake of at least four trials nationwide and one in Orange County that focused on the Scouting organization’s policy against allowing atheist members into their dens. The organization also prohibits gays from becoming Scoutmasters.

The $8,000 advertisement is “Step One . . . in a grass-root boycott” against Wells Fargo and Levi Strauss, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach).

Officials of both companies said support--$112,000 annually between the two in the state--was withdrawn when they learned of the Scouts’ discriminatory policy. Some money--the exact amount unknown--from Wells Fargo goes to the Orange County Council of Boy Scouts of America. However, the county organization does not get any funds from Levi Strauss.

The Scouts’ code of admission violates both companies’ longstanding policies of not donating to organizations that discriminate on sexual preference or religious grounds, officials said.

In response, Rohrabacher formed Save Our Scouts Inc., the support group that paid for the ad. The group is made up of four county Republican congressmen, other elected conservatives, noted fund-raisers for the religious right and the GOP, local businessmen and attorneys, some of whom are on the board of the county Scouts council.

They plan for the ad to generate enough support locally to make Wells Fargo and Levi Strauss officials reconsider their stance, said Rohrabacher, himself an Eagle Scout.

If that does not happen, Rohrabacher predicted that the ad “will become a model” for people elsewhere to start petition drives of their own to nationally boycott the corporations.

While Scouting officials are not enthused about being placed under a political spotlight at a time when they are beset by controversy, they are not ducking from the conservative group’s embrace.

The Scouts have nothing to do with the advertisement, the support group or its boycott drive, said Kent Gibbs, executive director of the 85,000-member Orange County Council of Boy Scouts of America.

“We don’t want to be a part of any group that is political--and this is a political thing--because (Boy Scouts) are not political in any sense of the word,” he said. “We welcome any support from any group that can help our programs and can help our youths.”

Still, Gibbs added ruefully, “I wish the issue never would have arisen; I wish there never was a need for the ad.”

At issue is the Scouts’ oath in which members swear on their honor to do “my duty to God and country . . . to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” Scouting officials define “morally straight” to mean no homosexuals.

In courtrooms from Miami to Orange County, the Boy Scouts stand accused of prejudice for refusing to admit boys without religious beliefs or allow gays to become Scoutmasters.

The county’s trial involved Anaheim Hills twins William and Michael Randall, who were kicked out of Scouting because they refused to say the word God in their oath. A judge in April ruled that the brothers must be allowed to rejoin because Boy Scouts of America is a business entity under state law and therefore cannot indiscriminately choose members.

An appeals court later issued a ruling allowing Scouts officials to keep the twins out of Scouting pending a hearing scheduled at the end of this month. The boys’ father, also their lawyer in that case, currently represents a 6-year-old Brownie in San Diego in a similar case.

In court, Boy Scouts attorneys have argued that the organization is a private group and should have the freedom to not allow boys who reject the group’s moral tenets. Scouting leaders have also said that gays make poor role models and that Scouting families have threatened to withdraw their support if gays are allowed to join the organization.

Boy Scouts of America claims that it is being asked to abandon values that have made the 82-year-old institution synonymous with being the standard bearer of innocence and virtue for families.

While the trials involving the Boy Scouts have made national headlines in the past two years, it was not until Wells Fargo and Levi Strauss decided to halt their donations this summer that individuals, businessmen and politicians publicly rallied around the Scouts.

Rohrabacher, who initially led the charge in September by getting 50 members of Congress to sign a letter backing the Scouts, said he is “not trying to make a political issue of anything.” He also denied that his group is attempting to reel the Scouts into the right-wing cache of family-values issues.

James Randall, the lawyer in the Anaheim Hills twins’ case, said he believes that Save Our Scouts, with its list of Republican officials and conservative cause supporters, is an attempt by conservatives to “further tout their family and cultural values battle cry.”

“Of course this is a political action, a large number of the people on that ad are elected officials and well-known fund-raisers,” Randall said. “And I find it terribly ironic that this organization that has it written in their document that (its officials) cannot be a part of politics are joining this political march.”

Board members who helped fund the ad said they are expressing their support as individuals and not Scouts officials.

“We are just a bunch of citizens who are trying to show our support for an institution that has helped boys for so many decades,” said David W. Wilson, a board member of the Scouts’ Orange County council and president of Toyota of Orange.

James V. Lacy, a Newport Beach attorney who donated legal services to the group, said there “was no political motive” behind the formation of Save Our Scouts. Rather, its purpose is to get “consumers to show their displeasure” with Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo, he said.

He added that he has received more than 2,000 letters of support since the ad ran and expects to receive at least the same amount before the month ends.

Rohrabacher said that his interests stemmed from being a former Scout and that he formed the group to look out for the organization in “these terrible times where corporate America is trying to force the Scouts to lower their moral standards.”

He accused the companies of playing “political games” with the Scouting organization by giving in to pressure exerted by gay-rights groups in the Bay Area.

“The Scouts are not equipped to fight a political fight like this, they’re not good at fending off political attacks, so we’re doing it for them,” Rohrabacher said.

“It is absolutely false for anyone to say that we’re trying to coerce the Boy Scouts,” said Levi Strauss’ Mary Gross. “We’re not telling the Scouts what to do, we’re not telling them to change their policy. All we did was we followed our company policy.”

Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo vowed to stand fast by their action.

If they did that, warned retiring Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), who is also a member of the support group, “I’ll burn my Levi jeans and close my Wells Fargo bank accounts and encourage everyone else to do the same.”

Dannemeyer said he joined the support group for two reasons. One, he had been a Boy Scout and the group “was a large part” of his life. Two, he feels that people who are challenging the organization’s oath of admission “are mounting an assault on family values in America”--a matter “I hold dear to heart,” he said.