Dismissed Den Leader Once Ran Sex Video Company

LOS ANGELES —  Irwin Spector, who made news last week when he was dismissed as a Studio City Cub Scout den leader for alleged atheistic views, has acknowledged that he was once the president of a sex video company.

He said left the business in 1988 before he became involved in Scouting.

Spector and the North Hollywood firm, Mail Mart Inc., were charged with several federal obscenity offenses. The charges against him were dropped after a plea agreement under which the company pleaded guilty to one felony count and went out of business.

Spector, 57, says the dispute over his religious beliefs was Scouting’s retaliation because he sent a letter of support to a set of 10-year-old Orange County twins who had refused to say God in their Scout oaths.

Eugene R. Richey, a spokesman for the western Los Angeles County Council of the Boy Scouts of America, said the organization was unaware of Spector’s past when it decided to suspend him for atheism. But the Scouts would also have been concerned by a Scout leader’s connection to such a business, Richey said.

“We stand behind our values and this is inappropriate to the type of program we are involved in,” he said.

Spector had been leader of Webelo Den 3 of Cub Scout Pack 445 in Studio City from September, 1989, until he was removed by the Scout council on Oct. 22.

He said he is an agnostic--a person who does not know whether there is a God, as opposed to an atheist, who believes that there is no God. In any case, he said, his religious beliefs are no business of the Scouts.