Pride Edition: Flying the flag high

Happy Pride, my dear readers! 🌈 This newsletter is about the LGBTQ+ community every month of the year, but this June I’m going to bring you stories about how Pride is playing out in Scouting. So enjoy this installment of the Pride Edition, and come back next week for more.

High above the offices of the Greater Los Angeles Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, three flags wave proudly against a bright blue sky.

On the far left, the flag of the state of California. In the center, our familiar stars and stripes. And to the right, the six-color rainbow flag with is five-color chevron, representing the beautiful diversity of the LGBTQ+ community.

That the Pride flag has been hoisted above the LA council office this year in recognition of Pride month is the doing of Gary Carroll, the council’s director of field services and chief operating officer.

“What’s really great about this flag is that it overlooks the 101 highway in Los Angeles, so it’s not hidden, it’s not tucked away somewhere,” Carroll said. “Everyone who drives down that highway in either direction … a lot of people see it.”

For Carroll, this symbolic gesture is a long time coming. He grew up in Scouting and has worked as a professional Scouter for the better part of 15 years.

“It was awesome, except for the fact that in most aspects of my personal life I was out completely, and in my professional life I was not. That was really a challenge and it would eat away at me a lot,” he said.

That changed in 2015 when, just as the organization was ending its ban on gay adults, Carroll moved to Oregon to work as a field director, and for the first time came out to his Scouting colleagues. The response was supportive, and Carroll brought a date to the staff Christmas party that year. But the issue still weighed on him.

“It started to dawn on me though that even though the BSA said yeah, gays are allowed … They weren’t saying that we’re welcome,” Carroll said.

He set out to change that, and along the way helped launch VIEW, an employee resource group for LGBTQ+ Scouting employees across the country. Now at his position in LA, he’s continuing to push for tangible progress on diversity, equity and inclusion. That’s part of the reason he asked his scout executive to fly the Pride flag this year.

“We’re doing it because we’re walking the talk,” Carroll said.

The council has brought in a specialist to run DEI trainings; has set membership goals to serve more youth of color in the city; and is recruiting diverse board members to lead those changes, Carroll said.

He also feels that the BSA has made significant progress on a national level recently.

“There’s been a large national conversation around diversity and inclusion in all aspects, and I think that is really good,” Carroll said. He pointed to the five employee resource groups, the newly-appointed vice president of diversity and inclusion and the upcoming diversity, equity and inclusion merit badge.

So the Pride flag at the LA council office is a symbol of this progress, but Carroll says it’s also a welcome message, something that helps put members of the LGBTQ+ community at ease. Two of his own team members told him as much.

“They felt accepted. And that they didn’t have to hide,” Carroll said.