In light of the recent decision by the Boy Scouts of America to continue the organization’s ban on gays, here’s an interesting read from The New York Times about the organization’s founder – who author/educator Brooke Allen believes was a closeted gay man. This is not universally accepted as fact and is often disputed.

Here’s the article in which Allen makes his case.

By Brooke Allen

With more and more American institutions becoming inclusive and even openly gay-friendly, the Boy Scouts of America has reaffirmed its unregenerate straights-only status: A special committee, formed in 2010, recently announced the organization’s intention of sticking with the 2000 Supreme Court decision that it is within its constitutional rights to exclude gays from leadership roles.

All this is richly ironic in view of the fact that the founder of the Boy Scouts, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, raised to the peerage as Lord Baden-Powell, was in probability a gay man himself – though closeted, of course, considering the circumstances. Read more »