When he was 14, self-described nerdy teenager Tim Curran joined the Boy Scouts.

Six years later, he sued them, after he’d come out as gay and they expelled him.

Related

Pete Hegseth threatens to cut funding to Scouting America over its gender-inclusive policies

Now, 51 years later, he’s back leading one of its troop, Xtra* reports.

“The very fact that I’m allowed back in is a sign that things have kind of moved full circle with the Scouting movement,” Curran said. “So I’m just sort of getting back on the merry-go-round as it comes around to where I’ve been standing this whole time.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Curran’s reunion with the scouts, now known as Scouting America, occurs as the organization has come under pressure from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to end its DEl policies and other social justice, gender-fluid ideological” stances.

“Back to God and country — immediately!” read a recent X post by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

The Defense Department’s threat is reminiscent of the kinds of discrimination Curran fought against for years within scouting organization, beginning in the 1980s.

Not long after he made the rank of Eagle Scout, Curran, then 18, appeared in a local newspaper feature about “gay teens” in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he grew up and was a member of a Berkeley troop.

His sexuality didn’t become an issue until he was a college freshman, when Curran applied to be an adult volunteer at a national Scouting event. The Boy Scouts told him that being gay made him “ineligible and unfit to serve,” Curran said.

The Boy Scouts then expelled him from its ranks.

After making failed appeals to the organization, in 1981, Curran filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the Scouts in California courts, alleging that the group discriminated against him because he was gay.

“Gay Boy Sues Boy Scouts,” read one headline in the years-long legal battle Curran waged. “Court Defends Gay’s Right to Membership in Troop,” read another.

His lawsuit was ultimately unsuccessful.

After a trial and several appeals, Curran, then 36, lost his case in the California Supreme Court in 1998. Scouting did not qualify as a “business establishment,” the threshold for being subject to California’s civil rights law, the court found.

Legally, the Scouts were free to set a discriminatory policy barring Curran and other gay Scouts and leaders from the organization.

Pressure from other gay scouts, however, led the Boy Scouts to end that policy.

In the 2010s, Scouts for Equality emerged with a campaign to sway the organization. Within a few years, gay scouts and leaders were welcomed into the Boy Scouts, the beginning of major shift embracing diversity in the organization.  

Soon after, the Boy Scouts also allowed trans boys and cis girls to join. In 2024, the group changed its name to Scouting America.

For years, the Scouts’ discriminatory policies, then Curran’s busy career as a journalist, kept him away from scouting. Now in his early 60s, Curran said he has more time on his hands. A local Scout leader in Manhattan encouraged him to rejoin the group as a volunteer.  

“It really isn’t checking a box or finishing a story or whatever,” Curran said of his return to scouting. “I mean, that’s great. I’m happy that that’s happening.”

“I see him just as another incredible human being mentoring our youth,” said his troop leader Antonio del Rosario.

Curran admits his first few interactions with the troop left him a little ill at ease, both in his new role as an adult volunteer, and confronted with his own history with the group.

He had a breakthrough, however, at one place that makes scouting so special: around the campfire.

Between skits, jokes, and songs at a recent winter campout, del Rosario brought Curran up to talk about why he was banned from Scouting, and take questions from the troop. Curran said the troop members were thoughtful and compassionate.

“Rejoining the Scouts, leading as an assistant Scoutmaster and now telling my story to the boys, represents the end of not just a chapter, but an entire volume in my life,” Curran said. “All the hopes, dreams, anger, and anxiety embodied in this journey, this project, can now be set aside.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.