Protesters Demand Scouts End Ban on Gays : Rally: Among the 120 demonstrators is grandson of Scouts’ founder, who he says would have deplored exclusion based on sexual orientation.

The contention by Boy Scouts officials that gays are not “morally straight” is wrong and the founder of the organization would never have approved of exclusion of boys or troop leaders based on sexual orientation, the grandson of Boy Scouts of America founder William Dickson Boyce told more than 100 protesters attending a Saturday morning rally in Hillcrest.

“For me it’s an issue of when are the Scouts going to change (their anti-gay policy), not if,” said the grandson, William Boyce Mueller of San Francisco. His grandfather founded the Boy Scouts of America 82 years ago.

Mueller, 40, was one of seven community leaders and gay activists, including a former FBI agent who was fired because he is gay, who spoke at a rally organized by the San Diego chapter of activist group Queer Nation. Demanding that the Scouts reverse their anti-gay policy, many of the 120 or so in attendance were gays who used to be Scouts. Some wore Boy Scout garb or full Scout uniforms.

The speakers and protesters met to support El Cajon Police officer Chuck Merino, who was expelled from his leadership role in the Scouts in September because Scout officials learned he is gay.

“Just a year ago I had no idea that my being gay and in the Scouts would lead to this,” Merino said of his expulsion from the Scouts and the attention it has attracted. “I have no bones to pick with the Scouts. They do a fabulous job. (But) I fully believe I can be a role model for both gays and straights.”

He said Saturday that his attorney will file a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on his behalf within two weeks, citing privacy, freedom of association and anti-discrimination laws and demanding that the Boy Scouts change its policy toward gays. “If they would change their policy tomorrow I would drop the suit,” he said.

Merino, a 37-year-old who has coached football at Grossmont High School for about 20 years and has been described by El Cajon Police Chief Jack Smith as a “superb” officer, served as an adviser to his department’s Scout Explorer program.

“(Merino) was told he does not belong and that something is wrong with him” by Scout leadership. “It’s not right or ethical or fair, and I think it’s illegal,” Councilman John Hartley told those attending Saturday’s event, held at The Center for Social Services on Normal Street.

Among the demands made by organizers of Saturday’s event: They want Merino reinstated to the police Explorer program and for the Boy Scouts to adhere to the principles as expressed in The Official Boy Scout Handbook.”

The handbook states that a Scout “has the courage to stand up for what is right even if others laugh at or threaten him” and that “he respects people with ideas and customs other than his own.”

The Boy Scout’s official policy regarding homosexuals is that openly gay men are not appropriate role models for young boys, and it prohibits gays from becoming Scout leaders. Ron Brundage, president of the local Boy Scouts Council, could not be reached for comment.

San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen, who was invited to, but did not attend, the Queer Nation event Saturday, severed his department’s ties to the Scouts because they discriminate against homosexuals. He has compared the Boy Scout’s anti-gay policy to the Jim Crow laws that sanctioned racial discrimination in the South 30 years ago.

“The Boy Scouts have a long history of being behind the curve, so to speak,” said Tim Curran, who drew national media attention when he filed suit against the Boy Scouts in 1980 for being expelled as an assistant Scout master because he is gay. The case is still pending in an appellate court.

After the press conference, about 50 people marched to the Scout’s local headquarters in Balboa Park. Many carried banners touting the “Forgotten Scouts.”

Once they reached the headquarters, which Scout officials had shut down and closed off by locking the fence outside, protesters planted signs on the fence and on a nearby lawn. One read: “End the Ban or Get Off the Land.”

Citing the city’s Human Dignity Ordinance, Merino and his supporters want the city to oust the Boy Scouts from the city-owned 12-acre campground and administrative offices that the Scouts lease for $1 a year. They also want the Boy Scouts off city owned land on Fiesta Island, where they operate a $2.5 million aquatic center.