The decades-long fight for LGBTQ+ inclusion within the Boy Scouts of America
The following is an excerpt from Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts—and America by journalist Mike De Socio, available June 4 through Pegasus Books.
This deeply-reported narrative illuminates the battle for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Boy Scouts of America, a decades-long struggle led by teenagers, parents, activists, and everyday Americans.A post shared by Pegasus Books (@pegasus_books)On the day the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the Boy Scouts of America’s constitutional right to discriminate against gay members, I was five years old.I knew nothing about this civil rights battle that was roiling the nation.
The fact that James Dale, the gay Eagle Scout who appealed his expulsion from the Boy Scouts all the way to the Supreme Court, also grew up in my hometown; that his Cub Scout pack had met in an elementary school in the same district where my own mother worked as a teacher’s aid; that my own Boy Scout council was the center of a decade-long national debate, was all totally lost on me.Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.But the BSA was already starting to become a big part of my life and identity.In the year 2000, I was growing up in New Jersey, in a part of Middletown called Lincroft.
The suburb was a place where upwardly mobile families settled for the good schools, idyllic parks, and small-town vibe. I began my journey in Scouting that year, when my mother partnered with the moms from the parent teacher association and formed a Cub Scout den for me and a familiar crew of about twenty classmates.The highlight of Cub Scouting, for me, was the Pinewood Derby.
