Can A Scout Be Gay?

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James Dale, 29, walks into Florent, a hip French eatery near a predominantly gay neighborhood in Manhattan. "Hi, Jaaaaames," coos Bruce, the maitre d', as he leans over in his black leather pants to kiss Dale, who has become something of a gay celebrity because of his case. Later, as Dale slices into his medium-rare tuna steak and sips a glass of Chardonnay, he seems a world away from S'mores over a campfire.

But Dale used to love all that stuff back in Middletown, N.J., where he grew up and, at age 8, entered Pack 142 of the Cub Scouts. Then known as James Dick--he understandably had the name changed--he became a model scout, earning 30 merit badges as well as the coveted eagle scout rank. He was on a first-name basis with the older men who ran scouting locally, and he gladly gave speeches to civic groups extolling pinewood derbies and asking for donations. According to the rules, scouts stop being scouts at 18, but Dale quickly became an assistant scoutmaster.

Then he went to college at Rutgers, and it changed him. Dale, who had attended a military high school and voted for George Bush three months after his 18th birthday, got involved with left-wing campus groups, according to acquaintances. He became a vegetarian and wore combat boots. After he came out of the closet during his sophomore year, he was elected co-president of the campus gay group.

The men from the Monmouth County Boy Scout Council might never have known, since Dale didn't have much contact with them from college. But on July 8, 1990, the Newark daily newspaper ran an earnest article about the plight of "homosexual teenagers," of whom Dale was still one. He had spoken at a conference on why gay teens commit suicide at high rates, and his picture appeared, showing him gesticulating next to a lesbian fellow student.

Yikes! thought the Scout councilmen, who revoked his Scout membership. When Dale asked for an explanation, they said the Boy Scouts of America "specifically forbid membership to homosexuals." Angry and sad--Dale had hoped to be a scoutmaster after college--he brought his case to the main gay legal organization, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which sued. Then in 1991 Dale gained solid legal footing when the New Jersey legislature, in an unrelated move, added gays to the state's Law Against Discrimination.

Today the crux of the Scouts' case against Dale is that he is a "gay-rights activist" who won't be able to "communicate scouting's moral values." In fact, it's difficult to imagine Dale sleeping in a tent at all these days, much less inveighing against gays around a campfire. Last summer, before his lawyers made him stop talking to reporters on the record, Dale joked with one that he was happy not to have to wear the uniform, "a cotton-poly blend." He lives in lower Manhattan and works as ad director of POZ, a magazine about AIDS. He has dabbled in modeling and appeared in January 1999 among the "OUT 100," a list of influential people compiled by a gay magazine.