Scouting For All recently hosted its fifth annual rally to protest the Boy Scouts of America’s (B.S.A.) discriminatory membership policies, which exclude gay and atheist youth and adult leaders. At the rally, which took place on Sunday, Aug. 22, local Eagle Scouts and San Diego community leaders were joined by Scott Cozza, the founder of Scouting For All, to take a public stand against the B.S.A. A crowd of more than 50 people gathered in front of the Boy Scouts’ Balboa Park headquarters for the rally.

For five years now, Scouting For All and local GLBT organizations have been protesting the Scouts’ use of city-subsidized land in Balboa Park. In 2001, in a 6-3 vote the city optioned to lease the land to the Scouts for one dollar a year, plus administrative fees, despite the fact that the City of San Diego has a standing ordinance that the city will not do business with organizations that discriminate. In April, U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones Jr. ruled in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of a lesbian and atheist couple against the Boy Scouts, stating that the lease was indeed unconstitutional. Despite the ruling and a 6-3 vote in 2004 by the San Diego City Council to terminate the Scouts’ subsidized leases, the Boy Scouts are still using both facilities and have not vacated either property.

“The B.S.A. is telling everybody that there are a bunch of fags from outside that are trying to come in and disrupt their organizations,” said Howard Menzer, an Eagle Scout and the southwest regional director for Scouting For All, at the rally. “I just wanted to dispel that rumor. We are members, we are Scouts, we are Eagle Scouts who are just disgusted with the turn of events in Scouting and we would like to do something about it. We would like them to come to the table and start leveling the playing field. We would like them to come to the table and help us give good leadership to boys. To all boys, not just a few boys.”

As speakers from Scouting For All addressed the group, local conservatives who staged a counter protest moved in across the street from the rally and began to read loudly from the Bible in an attempt to disrupt the program.

“We are here to celebrate our victory,” said M.E. Stephens to the assembled participants. Stephens is a local attorney and volunteer lawyer for the ACLU who argued the lawsuit in federal court. “We won our lawsuit in the trial court,” said Stephens. “Judge Napoleon Jones… has said this park belongs to you. As a legal constitutional matter, this park is yours and you should be celebrating this victory.”

Stephens added, referencing the conservative protestors, “I have been coming to this park every year, for five years and they have never been here, until we won. They need to hear our voice, and our voice says, ‘We won’ and I will defend their right to talk and I will defend their right to free speech, but I will not defend their right to interrupt us as we speak and I will ask them to have some respect as we celebrate our victory here today.”

Several of the rally’s attendees went on to chant “We won,” turning to face the protestors.

Mick Rabin, an Eagle Scout, local teacher and member of Scouting For All who spoke before the San Diego City Council during the 2001 vote to renew the Scouts’ lease, addressed the group with a thorough examination of the B.S.A.’s arguments for excluding gays. According to the B.S.A., no youth have ever been targeted by the B.S.A. for dismissal, but Rabin referred to reports that the Scouts have indeed removed youth from the organization. The B.S.A. also claims that mentoring youth with gay or atheist adult leaders is a dangerous proposition

“To say that gay and atheists adults are unfit to mentor youth is to promote a societal lie that has no basis in reality,” Rabin said to the rally. “By what criteria are they unfit? I would argue that the people at B.S.A. national who continue to propagate the institutionalized homophobia and religious egocentricity are the ones that truly defy the term ‘morally fit’.”

Scott Cozza, who co-founded Scouting For All with his son Steven and serves as president of the organization, was the keynote speaker at the rally.

“I’m embarrassed by the homophobia and the bigoted values of the current leadership in Irving, Texas, that has mandated that bigotry on a once-wonderful program,” Cozza said in his speech. “I can no longer say that the Boy Scouts of America are a wonderful program, I just can’t. When they espouse bigotry and exclusion it can’t be a wonderful organization – it’s been corrupted.”

Cozza also addressed the crucial issue of the B.S.A.’s right to public funding. “Schools should not be supporting them, taxpayer money should not be supporting scout units,” said Cozza. “They should not be allowed to recruit in our schools, and if they are going to do so they at least need to follow their own Scout law and speak the truth and tell the kids that gay kids and atheist kids and gay parents and lesbian parents and transgender parents and bisexual parents and atheist aren’t allowed in Scouting, but they don’t do that. They don’t put that on their fliers.”

Joining Scouting For All as partners at the rally were The Center, the San Diego Democratic Club, the ACLU, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).