Ousted Gay Scout Adviser Sues to Be Reinstated

An El Cajon police officer expelled from his adviser’s post with the Boy Scouts of America because he is a homosexual has sued to be reinstated.

If he is not reinstated to the unpaid post, he wants the Scouts kicked off city-owned property in San Diego.

Chuck Merino, 37, who organized an Explorers post with the Boy Scouts through the El Cajon Police Department in 1988, was told in September that “a homosexual role model” was not welcome as a member of the Scouts’ San Diego County chapter.

The decision prompted San Diego’s police chief to sever that department’s 25-year-old ties with the Boy Scouts and brought a sharp rebuke by the San Diego Human Relations Commission.

“I wish I could return back to the way it was before I got the suspension letter,” said Merino, who joined the El Cajon police force in 1977, at a news conference Monday. “But I feel I’ve been picked on and discriminated against. They basically said I’m not fit to be an adult leader who can work with kids.”

Ron Brundage, president of the San Diego County chapter of the Boy Scouts of America, said he would not comment on the lawsuit, which was filed Friday in Superior Court, until he had seen its contents.

John Kaheny, an assistant city attorney in San Diego, said he was expecting Merino’s lawsuit, which will probably force the issue of whether the Scouts can remain at their headquarters in Balboa Park for $1-a-year and continue operating an aquatic center on Fiesta Island in Mission Bay without payment to the city.

The lawsuit also asks that the Boy Scouts reinstate Merino as the head of the El Cajon Explorer Post and that the organization’s policy of excluding gays be held unlawful.

If Boy Scout officials change their policy and allow Merino back into the group, the El Cajon police officer said he will drop the lawsuit and any efforts to have the Scouts removed from city property.

Scout leaders probably discovered that Merino was gay about a year ago when he helped organize a citizens patrol of the San Diego neighborhood of Hillcrest where there had been a number of assaults on gays, Merino said.

The Boy Scouts sent Merino a letter in August, telling him that his registration with the Scouts had been suspended.