The first time I wrote about the gay membership debate
My reporting on this topic goes back more than a decade to my days as a high school journalist.
I still remember the day I conducted the interview that became my first article about the anti-gay membership policy in the Boy Scouts of America.
It was a bit meta—I was a 17-year-old Scout active in my Order of the Arrow lodge as the publications chair, and I was about to interview my adult advisor.
Su and I had learned a lot together over the previous years, collaborating to put out our lodge's print newsletter. But now I was turning the mic on her, because she was one of the few people in my life brave enough to voice support for gay people in Scouting at the time.
“It’s just discrimination, that’s what it is,” Su told me, describing the policy that was still in place in 2012. I recall being shocked that she was willing to say that so forcefully and publicly, and even allowed me to include her photo with the article.
I published her words, along with that of an Eagle Scout who had recently graduated from my high school, in a June, 2012 article that ran in my school paper, The Inkblot. We called the short series, "Scouts’ Say on Gay" (not one of my most creative titles, I know).
I truly had no idea that this little series—which, I'm sure you can agree, was not terribly good—would evolve into what is now a 400-page nonfiction book I'm about to publish in June.
Back then, I was just taking the temperature of Scouters in my area, trying to figure out where everyone stood on a policy debate that was unfolding in real time. I was also, to a large extent, trying to figure out my own place in it.
I'm so grateful to both Su and my high school journalism teacher, Andi Mulshine, for encouraging me to write these articles when it would have been easier for them to shy away from it.
It's thanks to them, and a long list of other mentors and friends, that I gained the small bit of confidence to become a storyteller and chronicler of the battle for LGBTQ+ inclusion.
If you want to read that original article, you can do so here. And to make sure you don't miss the publication of my book in June, go ahead and pre-order a copy.
