ACLU asks city to oust Boy

Scouts from park

Group's policy on gays protested; suit threatened over land
lease
By Ray Huard
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

August 3, 2000
SAN DIEGO -- The Boy Scouts are asking to stay in Balboa Park for 50 more
years.
The American Civil Liberties Union wants them kicked out now because the
scouts don't admit gay boys as scouts or gay men as leaders.
And the dispute may soon erupt before the San Diego City Council and the
courts.
The Desert Pacific Council Boy Scouts of America has asked the city for an early
renewal of its 50-year lease on nearly 16 acres of land at the northwestern
corner of Balboa Park, near the San Diego Zoo.
The scouts pay $1 a year under the lease, which expires in 2007. They want a
50-year lease in place as they prepare to launch a fund-raising campaign to
upgrade the campground and swimming pool they operate.
Potential donors are reluctant to contribute without a new lease, said Dan
McAllister, president of the Desert Pacific Council Boy Scouts.
"If we are to mount any kind of reasonable capital campaign we have to have
some assurance that we'll be there," McAllister said.
The city's real estate assets director, Will Griffith, said he may bring the Boy
Scouts' request to the City Council in closed session this month. Initially, the
issue will not be discussed publicly because it involves property negotiations,
Griffith said.
If the council agrees to open negotiations on an early lease renewal for Balboa
Park, Griffith said, he will recommend the new agreement be for less than 50
years.
As a general practice, Griffith said, the city has been shying away from granting
leases for such a long period. He said 25 years might be more reasonable.
Meanwhile, the ACLU is preparing to file a court challenge by the end of the
summer to the lease the Boy Scouts have on the Balboa Park land and another
lease with the city on half an acre they use for an aquatic center on Fiesta
Island, said ACLU spokesman Dale Kelly Bankhead. The Fiesta Island lease,
which costs the scouts nothing, expires in 2012 and is not part of the request
for early renewal.
"They should terminate these leases with the Boy Scouts unless they change
their discriminatory practices," Bankhead said.
The ACLU also will fight the lease renewal request when it goes to the council in

a public hearing, Bankhead said.

McAllister said Boy Scout policies are set nationally, not by the regional Desert
Council, which leases the city land. He said the Desert Council serves about
25,000 to 30,000 Boy Scouts from San Diego, Imperial and Yuma (Ariz.)
counties.
"A national policy is not something we're in a position to change and therefore
we have to deal with the situation as it is and our goal is to get that lease
renewed and to move forward," McAllister said. "We have just as much right to
our place in Balboa Park as any other group."
City Councilwoman Christine Kehoe, the first openly gay person elected to the
council, said she would oppose an early lease renewal as long as the Boy Scouts
refuse to admit gays as scouts or scout leaders.
"There's no need to renew it now. The scouts should change their policy," Kehoe
said.
She is less certain about the ACLU's demand that the scouts be kicked out now.
A year ago, the ACLU hand-delivered a letter to council members calling on
them to revoke the leases, but the council never formally considered the matter.
"I'd really have to see how that comes forward. There is no proposal right now
to revoke the lease. Even the ACLU's (next) action will be taking the city to
court," Kehoe said. "I'd want to know more about what the legal questions will
be."
Last year's letter said the Boy Scouts' anti-gay policies violated terms of the
lease, which bar discrimination. The civil liberties organization also contends the
scouts' policies violate the California and U.S Constitutions and the city's Human
Dignity Ordinance.
The group said the Boy Scouts' policy of promoting belief in God and excluding
atheists and agnostics also is unconstitutional and cause for revoking the
leases.
In November, Assistant City Attorney Les Girard wrote to Kehoe, saying there
was "no basis upon which the city may lawfully terminate the leases."
At the same time, however, Girard said there was nothing to prevent the city
from deciding against renewing the leases when they expire.
Girard, in his letter, said that under previous court rulings the legal provisions
cited by the ACLU did not apply to the city's leases with the Boy Scouts.
The ACLU didn't press the issue last year, choosing to prepare the court
challenge it plans to file this year, Bankhead said.
The effort comes in the shadow of a 5-4 June vote by the U.S. Supreme Court,
ruling that the Boy Scouts have a constitutional right to exclude gays because
opposition to homosexuality is part of the organization's "expressive message."
While the Boy Scouts can ban gays under the Supreme Court ruling, that does
not mean that the city can lease public land to the scouts, Bankhead said.
Moving the Boy Scouts out of Balboa Park would not be a simple matter.
The scouts have used the park since 1920 and have been on their current site
since 1940. They have had a formal lease since 1957.
Their Camp Balboa includes an Olympic-size swimming pool, an amphitheater, a
scout store, a chapel, eight camping sites and their regional administrative

offices. The Boy Scouts employ a full-time ranger who lives on the site.
But Bankhead said just because the Boy Scouts have invested in Balboa Park
and on Fiesta Island does not mean the city should continue leasing public land
to them when some members of the public are barred from scouting.
"Boy Scouts may be free to discriminate," Bankhead said. "Government is not."