Today, following a nationwide vote of 1,400 Scout leaders, the Boy Scouts of America decided to open up Scouting to boys who happened to be gay. In a way, this is a bit of news I’d been waiting to hear for more than 15 years.
Sometime during my sophomore year of high school, achieving the Eagle Scout rank became an extremely realistic expectation. I’d earned all of the required merit badges, and more. I’d already served as my troop’s Senior Patrol Leader (the highest-ranking youth position in any Boy Scout troop, and a democratically elected one), and I was a member of the Order of the Arrow (which is kind of like a cross between an Honor Society for Scouts and a particularly wholesome fraternity). All I needed to do to become an Eagle was to plan and lead my fellow Scouts in a suitably ambitious service project, and to pass a Board of Review (in which a Scout in line for advancement to any rank is grilled by a panel of adult troop leaders and parents, in order to assure he has the strength of character to deserve that higher rank). Neither task was anything to cough at, but for all intents and purposes, the growing pains were over, and all I needed to do to make Eagle was exercise a few familiar muscles a little harder.
Unfortunately, this was the mid-’90s, and another story was unfolding on the national stage for the BSA. Continue reading
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