Years later, gay ex-Scout loses suit over ouster

After 17 years, Timothy Curran's fight to force the Boy Scouts of America to accept homosexuals in its ranks has come to a final, bitterswet end.

Legally, he concedes he lost the battle he began in Berkeley, Calif., in May 1981: The California Supreme Court issued unanimous rulings Monday affirming the organization's right to exclude gays as well as atheists and agnostics.

But Curran, a documentary filmmaker who now lives in North Dade and works in North Broward, believes the Boy Scouts are losing a more important war -- the one for the hearts and minds of the nation.

"What has happened in 17 years is gay people have moved into the mainstream of American life. Hey, we even have a sitcome character now [Ellen]," the former Eagle Scout and assistant Scoutmaster said Tuesday. "The public has adopted a live-and-let-live attitude. Meanwhile, the Boy Scout attitude that homosexuality is immoral and unclean has become the fringe view. They've become the extremists."

The Scouts see their position as anything but extreme and applauded the ruling as a victory for mainstream values.

"The Boy Scouts of America has long taught traditional family values and a homosexual is not a role model for traditional family values," said Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the 88-year-old organization based in Dallas.

Though local Scouts have not tackled the gay issue, Jeff Hermman, executive director of the South Florida Council, which oversees troop chapters in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties, said his council supports national by-laws forbidding membership to "avowed" gays.

"From our perspective, what we're talking about is the right of freedom of association, the right to pursue shared values and goals, those sorts of things," Herrman said. "We are a private membership organization and we think we have a right and, frankly, a responsibility to establishment membership and leadership standards."

The California decision ends Curran's effort but it doesn't resolve the controversy nationally for the nation's largest youth organization, which has some 5.8 million members.

Because he sued under California civil rights laws, Curran can't appeal to federal courts, but a handful of similar cases are working their way up through the legal system across the nation, said Jon Davidson, Curran's attorney and the suprvising lawyer for the western regional office of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. The gay rights group, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the case on Curran's behalf.

"It remains a significant issue," Davidson said. "We're concerned about how it affects lesbians and gay youths. We're worried about [the Boy Scouts] sending out a message to gay children that they are unacceptable, and to other children that it's OK to discriminate against gays."

In a strongly worded decision, the California high court ruled that the Scouts weren't a business or public enterprise but a private group whose activities and facilities were available for only its own members -- and thus, exempt from state civil rights laws.

But other recent rulings have gone against the Scouts. In Chicago, the Human Relations Committee found the policy against admitting gay members violated the city's anti-discrimination ordinance. And in New Jersey, a split appeals court this year overturned a lower court ruling and ruled the Scouts "a public accomodation" that cannot exclude members on the basis of sexual orientation.

Shields said the Scouts are appealing the New Jersey case to the state's Supreme Court. If they lose there, the organization would take it to the United States Supreme Court, which could finally resolve the issue.

"We defend other people's rights to believe and live their lives as they desire," he said. "However, we simply ask other people to have the same respect for our values."

For Curran, the ruling removes a personal link to a battle that has spanned nearly his entire adult life. Now 36 and an award-winning filmmaker (his Rain of Ruin about the development of the atomic bomb was nominated for a Cable Ace Award last year), he moved to North Dade last May and works for a Broward-based television production company.

He filed his suit at the tender age of 19 -- "outraged" by his ouster from his beloved Scouts. Curran was a Scout from 1976 to 1980, eventually rising to the top rank of Eagle Scout. Openly homosexual in his Contra Costa County troop, he was asked to be an assistant scoutmaster, a job he did for about a year only on a part-time basis since he had entered college in Los Angeles.

Then after a newspaper featured him in an article about gay teens, he got a letter informing him he'd been banned.

"The parents and the scoutmaster knew I was gay. They were as stunned as I was to find out the national office could make that kind of decision," he said. "It was just the hypocrisy and ignorance that I had been taught not to tolerate by the Scouts."

Though Curran lost his case, he contends increasing social pressures will someday change Boy Scout policies toward gays, just as they did with the British scouts last year.

"This issue is bigger than just this little battle. The Boy Scouts are eventually going to lose this war."

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