Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts-and America

by Mike De Socio

Overview

This deeply-reported narrative illuminates the battle for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Boy Scouts of America, a decades-long struggle led by teenagers, parents, activists, and everyday Americans.

Weaving in his own experience as a scout and journalist, Mike De Socio’s Morally Straight tells a story that plays out over the course of nearly forty years, beginning in an era when gay rights were little more than a cultural sideshow; when same-sex marriage was not even on the radar; and when much of the country was recommitting to conservative social mores. It was during this treacherous time that accidental activists emerged, challenging one of America’s most iconic institutions in a struggle that would forever change the country’s view of gay people and the rights they held in society.

In Morally Straight we meet James Dale, the poster child of Scouting who took his fight for inclusion to the Supreme Court; Steven Cozza, the 12-year-old scout in California who started a movement for inclusion called Scouting for All; Jennifer Tyrrell, the lesbian den mother whose expulsion from the Scouts reignited the gay membership controversy; Zach Wahls, the son of lesbian moms who led the final push for policy change; and an array of other previously unknown Scouters who played smaller—but no less crucial—roles in the fight for full inclusion.

Richly reported and filled with unforgettable people, Morally Straight braids together these characters and brings to life their collective struggle. This is an essential narrative in the American LGBTQ+ rights movement, and a truly American story about the fight for a better future for our nation’s bedrock youth organization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639363858
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	124,013
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Mike De Socio is an award-winning independent journalist who writes about social justice and solutions. He grew up in New Jersey, where he became an Eagle Scout, and later earned a degree in journalism from Boston University. His work has been published in the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Guardian, Fortune, Xtra, YES! Magazine, and more. He now lives with his partner in upstate New York.

Editorial Reviews

06/10/2024

In this uplifting debut, journalist De Socio recaps the decades-long battle to lift the Boy Scouts’ ban on openly gay members. The organization banned gay membership in 1978, when two scouts were kicked out of their troop in Mankato, Minn., after coming out. De Socio theorizes that this sudden ban—which surprised many Boy Scouts insiders, in his telling—was an attempt to scapegoat gay members for the organization’s burgeoning sexual abuse scandal (the first public news of which had broken in the mid-1970s, and which would eventually bankrupt the organization in 2020). This hypothesis frames the rest of De Socio’s narrative, as he shows how the activists who fought for LGBTQ inclusion had to push back against the insidious notion that queer people were not “morally straight” (a phrase in the Boy Scout oath)—an argument the organization began explicitly peddling in the early 1990s during civil cases brought by expelled gay scouts and troop leaders, several of whom De Socio profiles. He also movingly explains how, as someone with a lifelong involvement with the Scouts, his own coming-out was hampered by the organization’s ban on gay adult volunteers (lifted in 2015, along with the ban on gay youth). It’s a poignant account of an institution’s worst impulses being overcome by members dedicated to its ideals. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"From its opening pages, Morally Straight hooks you and never lets you wriggle off. Deftly weaving together the inspiring if often heart-breaking stories of the courageous individuals who fought back against the discriminatory and exclusionary policies of the Boy Scouts of America, Mike De Socio crafts a thoroughly absorbing and poignantly personal narrative that underscores the power of social activism to transform even the most iconic and intransigent of institutions. This is a must read for anyone, which should be everyone, who cares about the past, present, and future of the battle for LGBTQ+ inclusion."

Richard J. Ellis

With masterful reporting and gripping prose, ‘Morally Straight’ reveals the futility of trying to defeat people who’ve been trained as champions of right over wrong, to occupy the high ground, and to lead with honor and integrity. Mike De Socio has written a powerful and essential history for anyone who cares about justice and creating change."

Mitchell Zuckoff

"Taking its title from the Boy Scout Oath, Morally Straight weaves detailed journalism and De Socio’s deeply personal memories in its recounting of the effort to lift bans on LGBTQ+ Boy Scouts and their leaders. Morally Straight is both clear-eyed and optimistic. BSA is now a broader tent, accepting gay, trans, and even female Scouts. But, as De Socio’s own experiences show, it still grapples with how to give its members the space and tools to remain true to who they are."

Bookpage

2024-03-28
A former Boy Scout analyzes how the group has evolved across tumultuous decades of LGBTQ+ exclusion.

“I was not athletic or popular in school,” writes journalist De Socio. “I was a nerdy, artistic kid who struggled mightily to fit in with my male peers, especially.” The Boy Scouts of America, he notes, became his “refuge.” He channels the significance of those boyhood experiences in a series of notable profiles and interviews with queer community members who found solidarity and belonging in the BSA. Unfortunately, some Boy Scouts, like De Socio, who achieved Eagle Scout status in 2011, discovered the group’s ban on gay members after they’d already become well established within the organization. Among the more illuminating interviews are those with John Halsey and Neil Lupton, lifelong BSA members who voted down the controversial policy at the group’s national meeting in 2013 and believed the ban should never have existed. The discussion delves into BSA’s earlier days, when it failed to address a rampant “pedophile problem,” and instead moved to prohibit queer members in writing in 1978. The author’s analysis dramatically covers how gay rights lawyers, employed by callously expelled gay scout James Dale, took the BSA membership discrimination fight to the Supreme Court. He also spotlights other cases of equality activism, including the plight of a lesbian den mother and how scout Steven Cozza’s grassroots initiative, “Scouting for All,” changed the face of queer scouting. The author combines his journalistic work with an interior perspective as a young Boy Scout “simultaneously observing and living through the gay membership debate,” and he concludes with upbeat coverage of “ArrowPride,” the “first official LGBTQ+ affinity space” in scouting, and a significant queer presence at the BSA’s 2023 National Jamboree.

An inspiring report on how a quintessentially American youth organization finally exercised queer inclusivity.

Kirkus Reviews