What the people want to know about LGBTQ+ Scouting

For all of the writing I do about LGBTQ+ Scouting, I readily recognize that I have a pretty big blind spot.

That is, I hardly ever see what’s unfolding at the local level. Most of my time is spent in and around national events and programs. So this week I decided to chat with Alex Mastromarchi, who has been teaching an “LGBTQ+ 101” course for Scouters all over the country—and consequently has a great sense of the burning questions and everyday struggles of scouters in the field.

We talked about some of the most common issues and curiosities, and how he’s giving adult volunteers the tools they need to make Scouting a more inclusive space.

Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Mike De Socio: How did you initially decide to start the LGBTQ 101 course?

Alex Mastromarchi: The first time I ever ran anything for Scouts, I ran the official Safe Zone training that's available online, for the Rochester Boy Scouts. And that thing is hefty, like three and a half hours—five, if you do the longer ones. So I was doing that one, and then I was offering it and making it available to volunteers out there. But nobody wants to sit through three hours, which I don't blame them after all the training Scouting does. So I had dropped it for a little bit.

And then when the pandemic hit, when I got involved with the LGBTQ Scouts and Allies group, a lot of people were asking a lot of questions in the beginning that I was like, “Well, I know the answers to these things, we could do little trainings.” So I kind of just started developing my own thing, taking bits and pieces—because Safe Zone is open source, you can pull it apart, do what you want with it—and borrowing things from other people. I was looking for, what if I only get someone in the room once, what can I get across to them in a little over an hour, pretending I'm never going to see them again to follow up? So what are the important things?

We ended up with what the LGBTQ+ 101 course currently looks like, which is: we're going to introduce people to their biases and make sure that they put them aside the rest of the presentation, then give them the pronouns, what to do when someone comes out, and then what it means that someone's trans or nonbinary. And then I throw inclusive language in there. But I'm also constantly editing it because again, people ask different things, people have different concerns, groups are different.

What are the issues that do tend to come up most often?

When I do signups, I have some preliminary questions. But I'll say all these are completely optional, and it gives me an idea of how to set up what I need to talk about. So the first question I asked is, “Do you think you are biased towards certain groups of people?” And the responses I get are great. Because some people are like, “No, I'm not biased at all.” And then other people are like, “Well, of course, I'm biased.” Somebody recently said: “I was socialized in this mess, of course I have bias.” Somebody was very upfront with me last time, they said: “Yeah, I'm biased toward queer people and fat people.” And I was like, “Oh, all right, that's a start.”

But the big one that I keep having to go back and add more to is pronouns. Thirty-three people signed up for the last course, and I had almost half of the people in one way or another tell me, when I said, what pronouns do you use, they left it blank or said “No, I don't use those.” So I've really had to expand that section. And really cover that everyone uses pronouns, this is what a pronoun is, here are some examples, and why that's important. That seems to be my biggest one.

And then sometimes people answer all the questions. The last question is: “Has someone ever come out to you?” And most people say yes. But for the people who say no, it just doesn't surprise me when I'm looking at their previous answers. Because I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't feel safe coming out to you either the way you answered the first four questions.

I'm a little surprised to hear that, because I imagine the audience for these is a little self-selecting. So do you find that people are resistant at all to what you're trying to share?

So when I post in just the LGBTQ Scouts and Allies group, and when I did it recently for Brown University, most of the answers were pretty much like, yeah, here are my pronouns, yeah people have come out to me, I'm here to learn something more. The surprises started to creep in when I started posting it in the Scouting Volunteers group, because that's a much larger pool of people. And it's a lot of people who have never been exposed to anything queer. So that's where those things started coming from.

It’s still a little surprising, though, that despite that background, they would still actively say, “Yes, I want to learn more.”

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy. I make comments. I'm like, “I can't believe someone would say this.” But the fact that they've stepped forward and said, “Hey, I'm here and willing to hear what you have to say,” is great, and I would never discourage anyone based off any answers if they want to learn.

So it sounds like pronouns are a big source of curiosity. Are there any other big things that tend to come up?

Near the end, a lot of people always have very specific questions about what to do with people who are nonbinary in their unit. Which there's no answer. It's not an answer anyone likes, actually, is the better way to put it. Because the answer the Boy Scouts has is: they go into the unit that identifies with their gender identity. Which is huge, that that's even the answer. But then people are like, “Oh, well I'm just not going to choose anything.” It's like, no, then something will be chosen for you, and you probably won't like it. So it's like, we have to work within the framework we're given for now.

Do you think part of the need for your course is just like a lack of direction from the national office on some of this stuff?

I'm not sure. The national office is busy doing a lot of other things. And I know that there's tons of people all over the country, in their own councils, in their own little pockets, who are all doing [something]. No matter where you look, somebody's doing something. And it's taking us a while to all kind of meet and unify and have that conversation. So it doesn't surprise me that the Boy Scouts of America, from a national governance perspective, hasn't quite gotten there.

The other half of it is, we exist in a queer world where we're exposed to it all the time. We talk about it all the time. But queer people are still minorities.

We also hold our own. There could always be the fact that there's enough of us out here doing work like this, that the Boy Scouts is kind of like, we're just going let that run and we'll take care of it later. But, again, I don't know, because I don't talk to anyone at the national office.

It sounds like there’s a huge appetite for this information. Why do you think that is?

It's because Gen Z—and whatever generation they're gonna label to follow—is hitting this point of one third, very quickly heading to half, who are identifying as something other than straight. And so we have this large generation of kids who are more exposed to it, more okay with it, more realize that they have the language to identify pieces of themselves, who are going to be joining these ancient organizations like the Boy Scouts of America. And this is why people are asking the questions now. This wasn't a thing 50 years ago, but now it's like, “Hey, my kid this, my kid that and my kid’s friends.” I have yet to run the training at scout camp where I don't have a parent come find me afterwards and be like, “So my kid came out to me as A, B, C, D or E this last week. How do I handle it?” It’s becoming way more common.