Scouts’ Ban on Gays Splits Community

Four months after the Boy Scouts fired a top executive in Santa Barbara County because he is gay, supporters and opponents of the organization admit that the battle over the group’s national ban on homosexual members is tearing the community apart.

Scout parents describe how their sons were booed during the Santa Barbara Christmas Parade, liberal Scout leaders have severed ties with the organization and gay rights groups continue to push for ending Boy Scouts’ special access to public property.

In what Santa Barbara County Supervisor Tom Urbanske likened to a Greek tragedy in which nobody wins, the board voted unanimously last week to end a lease granting Boy Scout Troop 33 the exclusive right to use the top floor of an old carriage house in the center of tony Montecito.

Boy Scouts have met at the site for seven decades, so long that the rustic building is known simply as the Scouthouse despite the county’s official name: the Manning Park Youth Center.

“It was not an anti-Boy Scout decision,” said board Chairman Joni Gray. “The reason I voted to terminate the lease is because it says we have to exclusively lease park property to a private group. Boy Scouts is an outstanding organization.”

The 25-year lease on the Scouthouse was signed just eight months ago, but it has been ground zero in the debate.

Leonard Lanzi, who at the time was head of the Los Padres Boy Scout Council, which serves Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, testified in favor of the park lease in October before dropping an emotional bombshell by announcing: “I am gay.”

Weeks later, the respected community figure and Eagle Scout was fired by Scouting officials. Representatives of Boy Scouts at the local and national levels refused to comment on Lanzi’s firing, and they did not return calls last week regarding the cancellation of the lease.

An employment discrimination suit that Lanzi filed in Santa Barbara County Superior Court is still at the discovery phase, said Steven Serratore, his attorney. “It could be six months before this is resolved. It could be five years.”

The Montecito lease was technically with the local Girl Scout council, which subleased to the Boy Scouts. Girl Scout officials emphasize that they do not discriminate against anyone, including gays. They too lose exclusive access to the property for troop meetings.

The county’s decision has left both Boy Scout parents and gay rights groups scrambling to predict the future of a controversy that keeps widening.

The Montecito Community Foundation is left holding $175,000 raised largely by Troop 33 parents for the express purpose of fixing up the Scouthouse.

The county now says it will finance the repairs itself, while continuing negotiations with the foundation on possibly donating the money to provide free use of the building for all youth groups. If such a deal cannot be worked out, user fees will be charged.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts will still be allowed to use the building for meetings, but they will be expected to get in line with other youth groups to reserve time slots.

“What changes is the exclusivity, or the priority that Scouts had in the past,” said Jennifer Briggs, county parks director.

Gay groups in the area have said that they have no problem with Boy Scouts’ being treated like every private-membership group.

But it infuriates Scout parents that the county is taking over a building that it was considering tearing down just two years ago, when it was found to be seismically unsafe and infested with rats and insects. Troop 33 parents rallied to save the building, which dates to 1910.

“The county made a lot of promises to the community of Montecito, to Girl Scouts, to Boy Scouts, to the fund-raisers,” said Susan Keller, who led the effort to raise money and is a Troop 33 parent.

Keller said many parents are upset at the national policy on gays. She herself describes the firing of Lanzi as “lousy.” But through it all, she said she believes that Boy Scouts remains a wonderful organization for molding boys into men.

Supervisors are expected to revisit details of managing the building on March 20, the same day Supervisor Susan Rose is scheduled to ask her colleagues to consider a resolution decrying the national organization’s ban on gays as “incompatible” with county policies.

Meanwhile, gay rights groups are demanding to sit at the table as negotiations over the lease progress. They are particularly worried about a “customary and historical usage” proposal being considered.

“We worry that that’s a nice euphemism for Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts before anybody else,” said Janet Stanley, spokeswoman for the umbrella gay rights group called the Pacific Pride Foundation. Stanley stresses that local Boy Scout members cannot distance themselves from the national policy, especially after Lanzi’s firing.

“You are defined by the company you keep,” Stanley said. “If this was about a group which banned African Americans or the disabled, nobody would stand up to defend it.”