Living History Project: What NOAC meant for queer scouts
The 2022 conference represented a huge milestone for the organization—and a deeply personal one for the LGBTQ+ scouts in attendance.
Many of the LGBTQ+ scouts who visited the ArrowPride space at the National Order of the Arrow Conference in 2022 walked away completely changed by the experience.
This is my second takeaway from the ArrowPride Living History Project. (You can read the first one here).
Why it matters: National events are a rare opportunity for scouts to experience the best the program has to offer—and can act as the only LGBTQ-affirming space they’ve ever experienced.
This is especially true for scouts who come from more rural, conservative parts of the country, and who’ve experienced bullying due to their gender or sexuality.
ArrowPride was the first-ever official LGBTQ+ affinity space hosted at a national Boy Scouts of America event.
In my conversations for this project, I heard over and over again that NOAC allowed scouts to be their most authentic selves. Here are some of the highlights.
‘If they get to be gay and happy, I'm gonna be gay and happy’
Cian Gardner comes from a troop in Missouri where 75 percent of the membership quit in protest of gay inclusion.
“My first experience with queer people in scouts is that, people don't like this. Like, ‘yes, it's allowed, but we don't like that it's allowed,’” he said. “Everything around me was telling me that being gay was wrong.”
That was par for the course for Gardner’s entire Scouting career, in both his troop and OA lodge. He knew he had to hide his gay identity to maintain the respect of his peers.
That didn’t begin to change until after the Covid-19 pandemic, which unexpectedly gave Gardner’s lodge a boost of new, young members—who happened to be very queer, and very accepting.
“I noticed there was a change in the atmosphere of the lodge, and it's become much more positive,” he said.
For Gardner, NOAC represented the culmination of this progress.
“In the past two and a half days I've been here, I've allowed myself to be more myself in front of my lodge than I have in my seven years of OA,” he said, because of the strong visibility of queer people and spaces at the conference. “I'm like, if they get to be gay and happy, I'm gonna be gay and happy, and my lodge can deal with it—and my lodge has dealt with it.”
‘It's still surreal to me’
Evan1 first came out to the scouts in his troop at the age of 14.
The years that followed were a struggle, marked by bullying and several openly homophobic troop leaders.
“I've had a bit of a rocky road with getting to acceptance of who I am, and how that fits into that the part of my life that is very active in Scouting,” Evan said.
It started to click when he joined the OA in 2017, and found fellow scouts who were accepting—and others who were part of the queer community. Evan never had a formal coming out to the members of his lodge, but simply stopped hiding who he was. And somehow, in his deeply conservative region of the country, that was okay.
This experience is what made NOAC such a meaningful milestone for Evan, who served on the staff of ArrowPride.
“Coming from an environment that made me feel ashamed to be who I was, now to being on the very first Admonition Team, and being a part of the creation of the first Pride space—the first space for LGBTQ scouts—it's still surreal to me, because never did I think that I would be able to be a part of this,” he said.
Evan’s own experience was mirrored by the many people he spoke to in the ArrowPride space: “I've had a lot of people this week who have come up to me and said that they really appreciate the work that we've done … This is not only scouts, but it's also adult advisers, who have said that their scouts have needed this space for quite some time.”
‘I was just absolutely blown away’
NOAC has, for many years, held a special place in Ryan Jones’ coming-out journey.
After going through his entire youth in Scouting in the closet, he first began coming out as gay to his Scouting peers at the 2015 conference—an experience both he and I have written about extensively.
In the years since, Jones has fully embraced his identity and his passion for supporting the next generation of LGBTQ+ scouts.
He knows that despite the policy changes, many challenges remain for queer and trans young people in the organization. That’s what motivated him to volunteer on the staff of ArrowPride in 2022.
“I was just absolutely blown away by the work that we did on Monday: Seeing at our ribbon cutting, that room was entirely packed,” he said. “It is very inspiring and awesome to see rainbow stickers on everyone's credentials at this event.”
If his dedication to continuing as an adult volunteer in Scouting ever wavered, his experienced at NOAC last year washed away any doubts.
“I absolutely love this. It is very critical work. And there's so much work to be done,” he said.
Evan asked to be referred to only by his first name, to protect his privacy.