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.
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.
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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. The challenge was this: each boy would start off with a block of pine wood, wheels, and axles; carve it into the most aerodynamic, properly weighted shape they could; and launch it down a sleek metal track to see whose would come out the fastest. I realized early on that I would never win the race outright—every year, one boy in the pack would manage to show up with what looked like a professionally milled, perfectly proportioned racecar that flew ahead of all our comparatively amateur creations (we would later learn that his father taught woodworking for a living).
Instead, I aimed for a different prize: most creative. My dad had a collection of tools for carving, burning, and sculpting wood, so he would bring me up to his workbench in the garage and we would hash out the shape together before I painted it to life. One year I created a car in the shape of an Eagle; another year, a peanut; and one time, a bobsled. These clunkers never had a chance crossing the finish line first, but they always earned me that creativity prize, filling my bookshelf with star-spangled trophies trimmed in gold plastic.
By the end of elementary school, my mom managed to bring our unruly bunch of boys over the finish line of the Cub Scout program, and across the bridge to Boy Scouting, where we could become Tenderfoots on our way to the Eagle Scout rank. Most of my peers, however, didn’t follow through on that promise. Only a few joined Boy Scout Troop 110, which met in the same elementary school gym.
There’s a photo from the crossover ceremony, of the whole den posed together at one of the tables. The image feels forced, everyone in the group stiff and barely attempting a smile. Except me. I’m in the center, leaning forward, mouth wide in a grin as if caught in the middle of a laugh. Maybe I should have known then I was different.
A couple of years after I joined the Boy Scout troop, I climbed out of a car on a crisp Saturday morning, a stop on a field trip to a nearby campground. I was probably twelve or thirteen years old, halfway to earning my Eagle Scout rank. I had thrived in Boy Scouts right from the beginning, especially as a nerdy middle school kid who wasn’t popular and wasn’t good at sports.
Out of the other car stepped one of our older Scoutmasters. As we filed toward the entrance, I overheard his conversation with some of the other adult leaders. He was talking about his alma mater, an Ivy League school. “Now it’s a bunch of flaming liberals,” he quipped in his signature lisp, born of a few missing teeth and a quick tongue. “Doc!” the other adults exclaimed, not out of objection, it seemed, but of censorship. They were trying to conceal their own laughter and set a good example for us kids.
I glanced over my shoulder to see the Scoutmasters chuckling. I didn’t know what “flaming” meant back then. But I didn’t need to. The message was clear that whatever flaming meant, it wasn’t good. This kind of casual homophobia persisted throughout my experience in Boy Scouts. Never an explicit condemnation of homosexuality, but enough hints for any boy to understand what was right and what was wrong.
It didn’t bother me too much at first. Back then, around 2009, these types of comments were wholly unremarkable, and I was unaware that the BSA had a formal policy banning gays. My friends and fellow Scouts all used “gay” as an insult, and nobody seemed to mind. Going into high school, I had a girlfriend and rarely thought twice about my sexuality. So while these slurs sometimes grated against my ears, I didn’t think they were aimed at me.
My attention in Scouting during my freshman year of high school was almost entirely fixated on something else: my troop’s trip to the veritable Scouting paradise known as the Philmont Scout Ranch—a place Scouts consider themselves lucky to visit even once in their life. It’s the crown jewel of the Boy Scouts’ High Adventure program: 140,000 acres of land in New Mexico spanning the Rocky Mountains, where groups of teenagers take hiking treks that flex the outdoor skills Scouting is known for.
On our way there, we passed a few days acclimating to the altitude by sight-seeing in Colorado. One night, we stayed at a YMCA. This was a treat, because it meant clean showers and bathrooms. I was eager to clean off after all the travel, but the idea of the locker room—showering with other boys—made me nervous. It always had, even in middle school when we only changed our shorts and shirts. So this, being naked around other boys, terrified me.
I went in anyway and found a white tile wall lined with showerheads and nothing else. No curtains, no dividers, no privacy. I stripped down, shedding what had become my unofficial uniform of green shorts, gray shirt, and black baseball cap that matched the tactical watch on my wrist. I grabbed my soap and walked up to the line of spigots, taking my spot between other boys. I tried to scrub down as quickly as I could to minimize the anxiety. But I noticed something happening. Something that, as a younger kid, would always happen despite how much I tried to will it away. I was getting an erection, and I couldn’t stop it.
The other boys noticed. I felt the stares. I knew this wasn’t normal. I knew it was making them uncomfortable. But I couldn’t understand why it was happening—and why it always did at the worst times. Thankfully I didn’t know those boys. Most of the contingent outside of my crew were complete strangers to me. So I kept the embarrassment to myself. It was one of the last showers I would take before descending into the wilderness for ten days, where we lived out of our backpacks and filtered water out of a creek each night. The lack of showering during Philmont treks is such a hallmark of the experience that it crosses over from disgust to pride at a certain point. (In a photo from my trek, I can be seen showing off my filth, lifting a grimy hand toward the camera and scrunching my dirt-covered nose in a laugh).
So instead of interrogating my experience at the YMCA, I buried it down with all the other awkward locker rooms and uncomfortable pool parties that didn’t yet add up to anything more in my mind.
By the time the next summer came around, I was focused on an entirely different type of Scouting adventure, the final task of my career in Boy Scouts: My Eagle Scout project. Having earned all the necessary merit badges and checked off all the other requirements, the Eagle Scout project is the final hurdle a Scout must overcome if they want to earn the rank before turning eighteen and aging out of the program.
I had come up with my project earlier in the year. I would build a bunch of wooden storage containers for my former elementary school, the same one where our troop met every Wednesday night. It felt like a good way to give back and was in line with the types of projects that other boys in my troop did, almost always involving construction of some kind.
Learning construction skills was hardly the point of the project, though. As any Eagle Scout will tell you, the process is more about building leadership experience: Making a plan, raising money, and executing the project with the help of fellow teenagers in your troop. And I did just that: Over three solid work days, we transformed the driveway of our house into a woodshop where a couple of pallets of lumber became four custom-made storage containers.
A few months later, my friends and extended family gathered at the Lincroft Elementary School for my Eagle Scout Court of Honor. On most nights, our troop’s meeting space wasn’t all that glamorous: a wide open gymnasium with yellow linoleum floors and cinder block walls. But for the court of honor, it took on a slightly more refined look: the brown metal folding chairs, usually scattered about the room, were arrayed neatly in rows on either side of a middle aisle, facing the stage. In the back, on a long table, rested a sheet cake emblazoned with the Eagle Scout logo.
As we all took our seats, I was buzzing with anticipation. I had seen my fair share of these ceremonies, and I was fully ready to be lavished with praise for this award I worked so hard to achieve.
One of my Scoutmasters walked to the front of the room and began what I can only describe as a monologue about my experience in the troop. When all was said and the ceremony was nearing its close, I stood up at the center of the room, the stage at my back and rows of chairs filled with family and friends ahead of me. As the medal was pinned on my left breast pocket, the entire room stood up at the official announcement of Troop 110’s newest Eagle Scout.
A wave of emotion crashed over me, my whole body lighting up with goosebumps. Applause filled the room, and shouts whooped up from the audience. My sheepish grin gave way to a beaming smile, and in that moment I felt more proud of myself, more loved, and more celebrated than I ever had in my entire life. The confusing moments from summers past, in locker rooms or at camp, were the farthest thing from my mind. None of it had yet coalesced into an identity; those memories were instead buried down deep, nowhere near the elation I was feeling in this moment. If I never accomplished anything else, I thought to myself, it would be okay, because I had accomplished this. And for now, nothing else mattered.
Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts—and America by Mike De Socio is available now through Pegasus Books. De Socio is an independent journalist based in upstate New York who writes about cities, climate change, and the LGBTQ+ community. His work has been published in the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Guardian, Fortune, Insider, Xtra, YES! Magazine, and more.
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