Members of the San Diego chapter of Scouting For All (SFA), an organization dedicated to inclusiveness in scouting, protested in front of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, where the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) held its annual convention last week from May 21-23.

The protestors expressed their disapproval of the BSA, which they said discriminates against GLBT and atheist scouts and leaders, and does not allow female scouts to join.

“The SFA all-volunteer staff, members and volunteers believe [the Boy Scouts] is a wonderful program, but it should be a program for all youth not just some youth,” said Howard Menzer, SFA Southwestern regional director. “The BSA receives special treatment by local governments, including San Diego, which allows it to carry on its discrimination on public property, while leasing public lands with taxpayer subsidies.”

In 2004, the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties secured a landmark settlement in a case against the BSA and the city on behalf of an agnostic couple and a lesbian couple. The courts said the city had violated the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state by granting preferential and exclusive arrangements for use of public resources to the Boy Scouts.

“Despite a Federal Court order, the City of San Diego continues to lease the Boy Scouts public property in Balboa Park and allow them the use of a boat dock facility on Fiesta Island in Mission Bay at a discounted rate,” Menzer said.

Protestors not only included activists from the GLBT community, but also others who the Boy Scouts – a self-described religious organization that discriminates on the basis of religious belief and sexual orientation.

“The truth is that today’s BSA is fundamentally hostile to the values of mainstream Judaism and to liberal Christianity,” said Eric Alan Issacson, a Sunday school teacher at the Universalist Unitarian Church.

Issacson, who said he enjoyed his time as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout in San Diego, said his son is discriminated against because of his faith.

“Lord Baden Powell, the founder of the World Scouting Movement in 1907 founded Scouting on the principle that Scouting would be offered to all youth and thereby providing them an opportunity to grow and develop as individuals and to help contribute in making this world a better place,” Issacson said, noting BSA was launched from the White House in the early 1900s by President William Howard Taft – a prominent Unitarian.

“BSA is fundamentally hostile to the liberal faith of Unitarian Universalism. President Taft would be shocked and saddened to learn that the organization whose birth he fostered has come under the control of social-conservative ideologues,” he said.

Brenda Watson, a Scouting for All member and Eagle Scout, who is a vocal transgender activist was also at the protest.

“We believe there is no room in Scouting for bigotry and discrimination,” said Watson, who resigned her position as an Eagle Scout, turning in her badge in 2006.

“The Boy Scouts of America needs to realize that we too are human beings and need to stop being treated like second class citizens,” she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the Boy Scouts, as a private group, have a First Amendment right to bar gays.