Forty-five years after he was expelled for being gay, Eagle Scout Tim Curran has made a historic return to Scouting America (formerly the Boy Scouts of America), now serving as an adult leader for a troop in Manhattan.
According to reporting by Xtra Magazine, his journey from being the first person to sue the organization for discrimination to leading a new generation of Scouts marks a full-circle moment for both the man and the movement.
In 1980, 18-year-old Tim Curran, a decorated Eagle Scout from Berkeley, California, took a male date to his high school prom. After being featured in a local newspaper story about gay youth, he applied for a position as an Assistant Scoutmaster.
The Boy Scouts rejected his application, stating that being gay made him “unfit” to lead. They subsequently expelled him from the organization entirely.
In 1981, Curran filed a groundbreaking lawsuit (Curran v. Mount Diablo Council) alleging that the Scouts violated California’s civil rights laws.
The case dragged on for nearly 20 years. In 1998, the California Supreme Court ultimately ruled against him, deciding that the Boy Scouts was a “private club” rather than a “business establishment,” and was therefore legally allowed to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
Curran’s case set the stage for the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, which upheld the organization’s right to exclude gay members – a policy that remained in place for another 13 years.
Following the organization’s massive policy shifts—lifting the ban on gay youth in 2013 and gay adults in 2015 – Curran was encouraged by a local leader to rejoin.
As of late 2025, Curran is serving as an Assistant Scoutmaster in New York City.
Curran described his return not as a political statement, but as a way to give back to the program that shaped him. “I’m just getting back on the merry-go-round as it comes around to where I’ve been standing this whole time,” he told reporters.
