Ex-Scout Who Had No Promise Urges Oath of Silence

My only strong recollection of Cub Scouts is of cutting up macaroni into the shapes of letters and spelling out the Scout Oath on a flat piece of wood. I think our pack might also have taken a field trip to see “Old Yeller” at the movies.

Clearly, I did not have the enriching experience that one is supposed to get in Scouts, which may explain why I lost my bearings somewhere between Webelos and Bear and eventually dropped out altogether, embarking on the dissolute life that has marked my existence ever since.

I’m not sure why I didn’t fit in. Maybe it was the yellow kerchief or the dorky cap or what seemed like a lot of rules. I was hardly a renegade at 9, but the Scout Handbook intimidated me and, besides, I never learned to tie any of the prescribed knots.

All this is by way of laying out what might be construed as personal biases against the Scouts. My dislike of uniforms and regimentation never went away, so, in some ways, maybe the Scouts are to blame for the way I turned out.

Perhaps that’s why the skirmish involving the 9-year-old Randall twins of Anaheim Hills and their Scout chapter originally appealed to me. The boys, about as iconoclastic as you can be at 9 years old, refused to say God during the Scout oaths and apparently have balked at fulfilling a routine religious requirement needed for Scout advancement.

Since the news first broke last month, the boys’ case has been well-documented: They suspect God is a make-believe character who doesn’t really exist (Wait until they’re in college and need to pass a final exam without having studied for it), and they won’t pay homage to Him.

The rub is that every Scout since the organization’s inception has believed in God, or at least has had the good sense to play along, and the organization won’t tolerate any atheists or agnostics, or whatever you’d call 9-year-olds who haven’t sorted things out yet.

So, the standoff. The boys’ father, attorney James Grafton Randall, took the Scouts to court. He says the boys shouldn’t have to express belief in God to advance in Scouts; the Scouts say that’s the way their bylaws are written, and if the boys don’t like it, nobody’s forcing them to be Cub Scouts.

That seemed like an issue sent from Columnists’ Heaven, and so I waded in with the profound opinion last month that the Scouts probably could just wink at things and that the organization would survive the fallout. I also predicted they’d all wind up on “Donahue,” but so far I’m wrong about that (People magazine got them instead).

To be perfectly honest, I saw the whole thing with more bemusement than outrage.

But now the boys have won a preliminary round of their legal case, and the Scouts have pledged to carry the fight onward, as has the boys’ father. After winning in court Thursday, the boys coincidentally had a Scout meeting that night.

Their father alerted the media to the meeting, and a phalanx of press greeted the Randall boys and the other Scouts and their parents.

That led to recriminations from the opposing sides, with the result being the Scoutmaster canceled the meeting because of what he thought was the proverbial circus atmosphere he said had been created. Everyone went home mad, and the twins were reportedly near tears after the hubbub.

There’s a good chance I’ll go to hell for saying this, but I can see the Scoutmaster’s point. If I’d been the Scoutmaster, I probably would have done the same thing.

This issue has inflamed people too much already, and if the end result is that the twins are near tears from all the stress, then something has gotten out of hand.

The philosophical point of contention may be interesting, but it’s not so interesting as to merit ruining Scout meetings either for the Randalls or the other boys.

This case is now in that dangerous phase where both sides have their backs up. Frankly, I’m not sure it’s worth it.

On paper, it makes for engaging discussion. In real life, it’s starting to get ugly and tiresome.

But feeling some responsibility for stoking the fires early on, I’d like to help. To wit, I submit this simple two-part plan for Mr. Randall and the Scoutmaster:

1) Go have a cup of coffee together.

2) Get this thing over with.

How about this for a compromise:

To fulfill the religious requirement, why can’t the Randall twins each compose an essay on “Why I Don’t Believe in God,” complete with encyclopedia research on various world religions. These are bright kids, and they wouldn’t mind doing that.

Then, maybe one of the other Scouts could write an essay on “Why I Believe in God.”

Then the two groups could exchange essays.

Being 9-year-olds, such an exchange would probably stick in their heads for about two days, and then this whole thing would be forgotten and they could get on with the business of being kids again.