Ten years as a Boy Scout taught Darrell Lambert to be honest, strong and inquisitive; to respect his parents, his country and nature; to help people and of course to always be prepared.
He learned those lessons well, and ironically has drawn on several of them in his fight against the Boy Scouts of America, which banished him from the group for failing to learn another mandatory lesson: belief in God.
"I could have stayed in if I had just said that I believe in God, but I would be lying, and I don't lie," Lambert told Reuters.
The defining "Scout Oath" begins with a pledge to "do my duty to God and my country," but the first tenet of a related 12-point "Scout Law" calls for honesty.
The 19-year-old Lambert earned nearly 40 merit badges and rose to the rank of Eagle Scout, the group's highest, before becoming an assistant Scout master at his troop in Port Orchard, Washington, about 20 miles from Seattle.
But earlier this month, after telling a review board he was an atheist, Lambert got a letter from the local governing council stating that, since he refused several requests to change his stance, his membership had been revoked.
"They said an atheist can't be a good citizen, that an atheist wouldn't turn in a wallet if he found it on the street," Lambert said. "They said that to be a first-class citizen you have to believe in a god."
"I told my Eagle board that I didn't believe in God when I went for my review and if anyone said that I wasn't a good citizen, then they could kiss my butt," he said.
BOY SCOUTS SEND REGRETS
The Boy Scouts Seattle-area council said it regretted that Lambert felt his beliefs had been compromised, but that its 5 million U.S. members valued its moral principles and they could not make an exception.
"For 92 years we've held duty to God as one of our core principles and one of our core values. We ask all our leaders to subscribe to that," said Mark Hunter, spokesman for the council.
The group does not specify how members should worship God, saying it welcomed "everyone from Methodists and Catholics to Hindus."
But the oath clearly calls for a belief in God, Scouts national spokesman Gregg Shields said, and atheists or agnostics, regardless of their other qualities, can not honor the oath and therefore do not belong.
"I would challenge (Lambert) to think about the first line of the oath," Shields said. "If he didn't believe in a god, it would be very difficult for him to take that Scout oath."
SCOUT VOWS TO FIGHT
Lambert argued that Scouts had violated its own charter, which prohibits rules inconsistent with U.S. laws.
"If you look at anti-discrimination laws, civil rights, freedom of religion, this is pretty inconsistent with those rules," Lambert said, vowing to pursue his case through the courts if necessary.
He plans to appeal to a regional Scouts board in Tempe, Arizona. But first he wants to gather letters of support pouring in from as far away as Japan and Australia.
"If that doesn't work I will go to national BSA and as far as I need to go after that," Lambert said. "If they want to be a private religious organization, under the laws of the United States and Washington state, they are not supposed to receive any government funding. But they are."
Many of the 1,400 chapters of the United Way, a nationwide public-private service group, stopped funding the Scouts in 2000, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was a private group that could determine standards for membership including sexual or religious orientation. That decision upheld the group's expulsion of a gay troop leader and overturned a New Jersey Supreme Court finding.
The United Way charter prohibits the charity from funding groups that discriminate based on race, sex or religion.
The Boy Scouts, a venerated American institution with members including astronauts, former U.S. presidents and sports heroes, also hold a rare congressional charter granting a range of privileges at state and local levels. The group can solicit members in public schools and receive special access to public lands and funds from fire and police departments.
CHOOSING ROLE MODELS
The Scouts successfully defeated several challenges over atheism and homosexuality in the 1980s and 1990s, including a lawsuit by California twins who refused to take an oath to God.
Courts continue to agree with the group. Earlier this month a Washington, D.C., appeals court ruled the Scouts could reject two gay men as troop leaders, overturning a lower court ruling and citing the precedent of the Supreme Court's New Jersey decision.
Several more legal challenges of the group's policies on gays and atheists are under way, and protest groups such as Scouting For All have formed in an effort to pressure the Boy Scouts to change their policies.
Rejection from the Scouts was devastating for Lambert, who thrives in Washington state's ample woodlands and enjoys teaching camping skills to younger Scouts.
"I love doing (Scouting), so this is heartbreaking," he says. "It's sort of a slap in the face."