Word: dales
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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...
...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...
...hard to imagine Dale's spreading the word that gay is bad, his attorney, Evan Wolfson, says the Boy Scouts rarely convey that message themselves. He says the Scouts have never taken a position on homosexuality outside a court case. "The anti-gay view is never communicated to any member," Wolfson says. "The freedom of association turns on what brings members together. And scouting is not about bigotry." (Interestingly, the Girl Scouts have an antidiscrimination policy that is understood to forbid bias against lesbians--though Girl Scout leaders aren't supposed to display their sexuality...