Pride Profile: Gary Carroll

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Gary Carroll comes from a long line of Scouters.

His mother and grandma were both involved in the Girl Scouts, and once he saw all of his elementary school friends wearing the scout uniform, he wanted in.

“I thought that was the coolest thing ever,” Carroll recalls.

He joined up at age seven, and continued with the program after his family moved from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C.

“When I made it to summer camp, that was it for me. I found my place, I found my people,” Carroll said. He would end up serving on camp staff, in one way or another, for the better part of 15 years.

And it was during that time when he was convinced to join the ranks of professional Scouters — something he initially resisted. He thrived at camp, and didn’t think he would enjoy the office work. But once he tried it, he realized he was really passionate about that piece of Scouting, too.

“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,” Carroll said.

This was before national BSA policy changed to allow openly gay adults in the program. Carroll’s team in D.C. kept him from being run out of Scouting, and he relished his role as a camp director, 200 miles away, where he could create a different culture.

Carroll’s guiding principle was this: “I said, we’re going to be accepting of everybody.”

He knew there were other gay scouts on camp staff, even if they weren’t out, and he wanted to celebrate the diversity of everyone at summer camp. He worked to make sure everyone there felt included.

“That translated to some of the best summers we ever had,” Carroll said. But he knew there were limits to what he was doing.

“I didn’t know how to really push that beyond where I was, and I would hope that the BSA would come to its senses,” about its gay member policy, Carroll said. “I’m very glad that the organization caught up with the country, so to speak.”

By 2015 — the year the BSA dropped its ban on gay adults — Carroll had left camp and moved to Portland for a new role as a field director at the local Scouting council. That was where he came out to his scout executive for the first time.

“It was really a frightening moment for me, and he was the most kind and supporting person in that conversation,” Carroll said.

He found an accepting community there. He brought a date to the staff Christmas party. But he was itching to have a larger impact for the LGBTQ+ community.

Carroll interviewed for a role at the BSA national service center, and made it clear that the organization was not doing enough to embrace its LGBTQ+ members. That conversation, and his new national role, led to the creation of VIEW, a resource group for LGBTQ+ Scouting employees.

“The outpouring was just amazing. I got no negative anything,” Carroll said of the group’s formation. It has 300 members nationwide and continues to educate the entire BSA workforce population.

Now in his role as the director of field services and chief operating officer at the Greater Los Angeles Area Council, Carroll continues to push for diversity, equity and inclusion. He recently raised the Pride flag at the council offices, and is helping set membership goals to serve more youth of color in the city.

He credits much of the recent momentum in the BSA to the broader cultural shifts in 2020 during the pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and increased pushes for inclusion.

“We can’t go back and our social consciousness has really awakened,” Carroll said.

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