PROVDENCE, R.I. -- When the Boy Scouts of America announce next month whether to reaffirm its policy excluding openly gay members, Tavis Morello will be paying particular attention.
He is 30 years old now, a Boston lawyer handling corporate mergers and acquisitions. Fourteen years ago, he was a teenage Eagle Scout from South Kingstown who lost a job at the Boy Scout's Camp Yawgoog in Hopkinton on the same day a camp director asked him if he was gay.
The ramifications of that summer incident in 1999 also linger. For Morello. For the Boy Scouts. For local supporting organizations that have had to weigh the tremendous good the Boy Scouts provide boys and the community, against their consciences in supporting a private institution that openly -- and with the U.S. Supreme Court's consent -- discriminates.
The Narragansett Council of Boy Scouts apologized to Morello and offered him his job back, but Morello didn't return. The Council also passed a resolution urging the national organization to reconsider its policy banning gays. Fourteen years later, the policy's fate will be decided next month.