The Boy Scouts’ moral panic all began with 2 queer teens in the 70s who refused to stay closeted

The following is an excerpt from Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts—And America by Mike De Socio, published by Pegasus Books.

When the national office of the Boy Scouts of America [BSA] issued a letter to local Scout executives in February of 1978, it did not come out of nowhere. The message (subject line: “Homosexual Unit Members”) that BSA public relations director Russ Bufkins sent out was a direct reaction to current events. The first sentence laid out the context: “National wire services have carried a story from Mankato, Minn., reporting that an Explorer post Advisor had refused to renew the membership of two young men who said they were homosexuals.” 

Indeed, two weeks earlier, the Mankato Free Press—right alongside the Associated Press—reported that Lowell Creel, a Mankato police sergeant and adviser to a Boy Scout unit, declined to renew the memberships of  Scott Ford, seventeen, and Scott Vance, sixteen, when he found out that they were gay. 

Related: Boy Scouts rebrands itself as Scouting America to be more gender inclusive

The change comes after sex abuse claims bankrupted the 114-year-old organization.

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The expulsion came as a surprise to the teenage boys, who were quoted in the Free Press decrying what they saw as discrimination. “I was shocked and hurt,” Ford told the paper. “If I had a choice, I’d rather be straight. I don’t like the discrimination,” Vance added.

Vance was also distraught that he’d have to give up Scouting. He had first joined as a Cub Scout but, thanks to his parents’ divorce and two moves in quick succession, he never progressed into Boy Scouts. When his family settled in Mankato, a small college town about an hour and half outside Minneapolis, Vance heard from a friend at school about something called a police Explorer post. It was a little-known branch of the BSA that basically trained teenagers for careers in law enforcement, with some of Scouting’s classic moral teachings mixed in.

He was fourteen, and quickly learned to love the program. At their meetings, the officers taught Vance police holds, and how to search and handcuff somebody. They brought him on ride-a-longs a few times a week. Vance did a lot of target shooting, and didn’t have to pay for the bullets. “It was a heck of a lot of fun,” Vance says.

One night during high school, Vance had his friend from the Explorer post, Scott Ford, over to his house for a sleepover. The two had built up a strong relationship during their years together in the program, offering each other a helping hand or shoulder to cry on. That night, Ford was hanging out in Vance’s room, sprawled out on the bed. “Listen, I got something  important to talk about,” Ford announced. Vance turned to his friend, who said he thought he liked men and was probably gay. Vance cracked up, his laughter immediately giving Ford the wrong impression. “No, it’s not funny,” Ford insisted. But Vance couldn’t help himself, because he was about to tell Ford that he liked boys, too: he was bisexual. “Oh, my God,” Ford said, now fully comprehending the humor in the situation. “Yeah,”  Vance said, “It’s amazing.”

What were the chances that these two friends, living in a small Midwestern town in the late ’70s, would both happen to be gay? They were relieved in the knowledge that they weren’t alone. But not everyone felt that way. When Vance’s mother found out, she was immediately worried. Her own brother had been gay, and she watched him lose a teaching job because of it. Other gay people in town (and there were only a few who were out) were regularly evicted from apartments. “She was scared that that was going to happen to me,” Vance says. “I told her, ‘Mom, things are different now. Times are changing.’”

She was not convinced. She called Sgt. Creel, the Explorer post adviser, hoping he could counsel her son and his friend Scott Ford, both of whom, she told him, were gay. The boys, who were both being raised by single mothers, had a good relationship with Creel, treating him as something of a father figure. But Creel was not interested in helping Ford and Vance navigate the world as gay men. Instead, at the next Explorer post meeting, Creel pulled them aside, and told them he would not renew their membership when it expired in a few months, for the sole reason that they were gay. “We just didn’t understand why” we were kicked out, Vance says. “We  hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.” 

The teenagers decided to protest their removal publicly. They reached out to Jim Chalgren, a gay adviser at Mankato State, the university in town and the home of a magnet high school where both boys were enrolled. Chalgren helped them bring their case to the Mankato Equal Opportunities Commission, but that was little help, because the discrimination Ford and  Vance experienced was not, in fact, illegal. The city council, just earlier that month, had rejected an ordinance that would have banned discrimination against gays. 

So Chalgren helped them set up a press conference on campus. National media, including the AP wire service, showed up on a chilly Monday morning at the end of January. At the sight of the crowded conference room, Ford immediately clammed up, his well-practiced responses stuck in his throat. With no other option, Vance stepped in. “I can’t stop talking, because I’m scared to death,” he recalls. When he got home, he told his mom it was going to be on the six o’clock news. Sure enough, it was.

Creel’s response to the press conference didn’t make it into the news until the next day’s paper. “I wish to make clear that the decision (to deny the two boys continued membership on the post) was mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Boy Scouts of  America,” or even the police station for that matter, he told the Mankato Free Press. In other words, he was acting on his own beliefs, from “the position of a private citizen.”

But his actions did, in fact, reflect the opinion of the Boy Scouts of  America. In the same article, Russ Bufkins, the Scouts’ director of public relations, said, “We support the action taken by the post advisor (Creel) as  a prerogative of the organization to accept and reject members.” He also noted that, while the BSA protected against discrimination on the basis of race, color, and religion, it had no such protections for sexual preference.

And then Bufkins told the Free Press one other, crucial fact: this was the first known action taken by a Boy Scout group against a homosexual. The novelty of the event, and its exposure all over the country by way of national news coverage, was evidently enough to stir up curiosity in other Boy Scout councils and units. Two weeks later, in his letter sent to local Scout executives, Bufkins attempted to clear up any confusion on the matter. “We support the decision of the Mankato, Minn. Explorer post Advisor regarding the denial of membership to youth members who declared themselves to be homosexuals,” Bufkins wrote.

This letter, however, was apparently not enough to quell the interest concerning gay membership. A month later, on March 17, 1978, the national office in North Brunswick, New Jersey, issued an internal memo, this time addressed to “executive committee members”—the small, national governing body of the organization. 

It cut right to the chase, setting up a statement of “policies and procedures relating to homosexuality and Scouting,” the first-ever written expression of Scouting’s stance on gay members. It explained that gay men were not permitted to serve as volunteers or employees, and gay boys could not join as Scouts. Notably, the letter did not provide any moral or religious reasons for the exclusion of gay members—in fact, it gave no reasoning at all, beyond saying that homosexuality was not “appropriate” and not “in the best interests of Scouting.”

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