How Cheryl Katon helped the BSA navigate LGBTQ policy changes
A quick recap of my podcast interview with the former scout executive.
Cheryl Katon was a crucial voice from within Scouting that pushed top leadership to move faster to include gay and trans scouts.
Why it matters: Katon used her positions of power at the council level to consistently advocate for LGBTQ inclusion, and in the meantime developed local “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”-style policies for gay members, in defiance of the national ban.
By the time she left Scouting a few years ago, Katon saw all policy barriers to LGBTQ members vanish, and a new era of inclusion begin.
Go deeper: In my podcast conversation with Katon, we talked about her lifelong career in Scouting, and simultaneous journey with her gender identity.
Katon has spent the better part of five decades in Scouting, and immediately excelled in the program when she joined as a youth. She “loved every minute of it as a cub scout. Loved every minute as a boy scout,” she said.
But from an early age, it became clear to Katon that she “wanted to be a girl,” despite the world seeing her as a boy. She would eventually craft something of a double life, living publicly as “Chuck” and privately as Cheryl for decades.
Nonetheless, Katon dedicated her life to Scouting. On her third day as a youth summer camp counselor, she told her tentmate she wanted to find a way to do this for the rest of her life. And she did. Katon started her professional Scouting career as a summer camp director, and later worked as a director of field service and scout executive.
In each city where she worked through the 1990s and 2000s, she advocated against the anti-gay membership policy. “I had always been one of those voices that said, ‘This is the wrong policy,’” Katon told me.
By the time Katon left the BSA in 2021, she helped top Scouting leaders navigate the inclusion of queer and eventually trans members, too. And around the same time, she came out fully as a trans woman, and stopped leading that double life.
If you haven’t yet, you can listen to my full conversation with Katon at the link below.
