ANAHEIM — At a tender age, twins William and Michael Randall believed in the tooth fairy, in Santa Claus and even the Easter Bunny--but not in God.
After all, the other characters brought Christmas presents, chocolate eggs and moola for teeth. If there was a God, they asked, where were the goodies to prove it?
The twins' refusal to recite that part of the Boy Scout oath acknowledging a duty to God, and their subsequent expulsion from their Cub Scout pack, sparked a nationwide controversy in 1991.
An appeals court in Santa Ana sided with a Superior Court judge who had ordered the Boy Scouts to readmit the twins, declaring that the youth organization violated California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of religion.
Because other appeals courts have ruled differently--that the Boy Scouts should not be considered a business establishment subject to the Unruh Act--the California Supreme Court has decided to resolve the issue once and for all.
On Jan. 5, state Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments in two cases--that of the Randalls and another involving a Los Angeles Scout who was barred from adult membership because he is gay.
The Supreme Court will be weighing the contradictory rulings in the two cases just when the Randalls are expected to be considered for Eagle Scout badges, Scouting's highest rank and the 16-year-old twins' ultimate goal.
If the justices eventually rule for them, the brothers say, their six-year legal battle with the Boy Scouts--which has spanned more than one-third of their lives--would have been worth it.
If they lose, the twins, and their parents, say the boys would be crushed.
"A loss would be devastating," said James Grafton Randall, the twins' father and attorney. "It would be like the loss of a limb. They've spent 11 years of their lives in [Scouting]. You might as well order up a casket and hold a funeral, because they would have lost somebody."
Attorneys for the Boy Scouts say that having the twins in the Scouts violates the organization's 1st Amendment right to freedom of association.
"This case deals with a core Scouting value," George Davidson, a New York attorney for the Boy Scouts, said last week. "It's simple. The Boy Scouts ask people to accept a requirement of undertaking a duty to God. If they won't do that, they can't be Boy Scouts."
