Philadelphia’s Washington Square West neighborhood — which is home to the city’s Gayborhood — was awarded a historic designation in 2024. While many LGBTQ+ Philadelphians were excited by news of preserving approximately 1,500 residences, religious spaces and business properties spanning the 26 included blocks, the designation was not celebrated by all.

Advocates, including the Washington Square West Civic Association and various LGBTQ+ residents, partly framed the designation as long-overdue recognition for the area’s LGBTQ+ culture and Black history — but opponents argued it would impose costly restrictions on property owners and limit new development. A group of property owners — which also includes LGBTQ+ people — took the city to court over the designation and successfully overturned the decision.

The judge cited a lack of substantial evidence as a leading cause for his decision despite the Philadelphia Historic Commission’s nearly 1,500-page nomination packet. Attorney Dan Auerbach, representing the residents who opposed the designation, told WHYY that the documents submitted didn’t explain why many of the properties hold historic significance. Just 173 properties were described as historically significant, he argued. However, 773 of 1,509 properties included in the boundary — more than half of the neighborhood’s properties — are already listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In March, the judge’s ruling was vacated after an appeal — effectively forcing the process to start over. The historic designation stands in the meantime. The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia is now drafting its own brief — due May 18 — to support the city’s position, which the organization’s executive director Paul Steinke believes will elaborate on the merit of the designation as a supplement to the city’s arguments.

Scholars have found that Philadelphia’s local historic designation offers a more protective effect on buildings facing possible demolition than the national register. Because zoning and construction is overseen by local laws and leaders, local designations play a stronger role in preservation. But that doesn’t mean buildings with the designation are guaranteed to be preserved.

The outcome of this lawsuit could affect a major re-development project that would benefit the LGBTQ+ community but has been met with mixed feelings. William Way LGBT Community Center (WWCC), which is currently housed in a pre-Civil War era building that would be harder to demolish under the designation, is set to be leveled (along with a famous LGBTQ+ mural on its facade) to build a more accessible space for gatherings and queer-centered low-income housing units.

Steinke underlined that it’s possible for the project to move forward as-is. Historic designations do not prevent every demolition. There are standards in place that allow for demolition, which WWCC would need to meet for the project to be approved.

WWCC leaders would need to appear before the historical commission to seek a demolition permit before applying to the city, but that obstacle would be removed if the historic designation is overturned.

Historic designation is mostly used to preserve the character of buildings through recommendations about how owners can restore or maintain exterior facades. Steinke hopes WWCC will adjust its plans to maintain all or some of the most important historic elements of its current home (the facade, historic marble and wooden staircases, entryways and ballroom) rather than demolishing it all outright. He hasn’t lost hope, but he admits he hasn’t convinced anyone at WWCC to change the current plans.

It’s a project that seems to place competing interests in tension. There’s a need for housing — especially income-specific, LGBTQ+ centered projects — in that neighborhood. This, as Steinke hopes, could be pursued without demolishing much-loved cultural landmarks — but WWCC has emphasized that the price tag for pursuing its goals this way makes preservation out of reach.

The Washington Square West litigation is one of three active lawsuits pending against historic districts in Philadelphia. Six newer proposals are also currently in various stages of the nomination process — but if approved, they too could be contested and overturned.

A 2002 attempt to designate Spruce Hill was unsuccessful due to resident opposition that may have been fueled by politics. It was the third attempt to nominate the neighborhood. A case study published in 2023 by a University of Pennsylvania student about the matter found that the opponents feared increased maintenance costs, the loss of personal freedom and gentrification.

“Ironically, in the two decades since that campaign, Spruce Hill has become one of the most gentrified — and threatened — neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia,” the study notes.

Residents also feared displacement. The case study underlines that residents who are displaced by gentrification tend to move to neighborhoods with lower property values, less access to resources, and fewer opportunities for upward economic mobility.

Following historic designation, the number of college-educated households in a community tends to increase while the poverty rate drops in contrast to its adjacent neighborhoods, which do not receive the designation. These and other factors contributing to economic mobility are visible on maps created by the Opportunity Atlas, a project of Harvard University which presents information collected by the census in an effort to tangibly discuss economic mobility in localities across the United States. It shows the same patterns in many of Philadelphia’s historic districts.

But the Washington Square West neighborhood outperformed the surrounding blocks even before the historic designation took effect — highlighting that the designations themselves may not always be the cause of disparities.

“It’s true that in most cases, historic districts aren’t the most affordable neighborhoods in any city — no matter where you go,” Steinke said. “That’s not the fault of the historic district.”

Historic districts tend to protect properties and neighborhoods that are historically, architecturally, or culturally significant — properties that already tend to be expensive.

For example, Steinke underlined that Rittenhouse Square was expensive before it was officially designated as historic — and some neighborhoods, like Graduate Hospital, have become pricey without the designation.

Historic preservation may actually promote some protective factors that act as a buffer against gentrification and rising rents, contradicting the most common fears. For instance, the designation makes it harder for developers to tear down smaller, older, more affordable homes or significant community hubs that sit on desirable land in order to build newer, larger, high-cost housing units in their place.

Many LGBTQ+ locals opposed the redevelopment of the Gayborhood’s former 12th Street Gym — which held cultural significance and a meaningful mural of queer activist Gloria Casarez. It was removed alongside a neighboring building of note for its connection to Black history. A luxury high-rise apartment complex now takes its place.

Residents of a working-class neighborhood in Durham, N.C. hoped they would stave off developers and prevent or slow gentrification by pursuing historic designation in 2016.

Steinke explained that this has happened in Philadelphia too.

The Parkside neighborhood, which is situated near the Please Touch Museum, has been a historic district for 15 years, Steinke explained. It was a low to moderate income, majority minority neighborhood when it was designated in 2009 and it still is today, he said. The same is true for West Diamond Street in North Philly, which was designated historic in the 1980s. It was a low to moderate income neighborhood then and has remained one today.

“Real estate prices are a factor of so many other things — proximity to work, public safety, access to schools, access to shopping and other amenities, transportation,” Steinke said. “That’s really what determines property values and neighborhood value.”

Those are also factors that have strong correlations with upward economic mobility.

Despite a poverty rate that is lower than it has been in decades, Opportunity Insights ranks Philadelphia as last among large metro areas for upward economic mobility — with some children experiencing even worse economic outcomes than their parents. It’s a problem Mayor Cherelle Parker has addressed with new initiatives she hopes will support young people who hope to break free from cycles of poverty.

The supplemental programs that offer economic support to historic homeowners in Durham might have helped its anti-gentrification efforts succeed.

Steinke said it’s true that some preservation-oriented maintenance costs may be higher upfront, but many of those options also last longer and could even cost less than cheaper fixes that must be repeated over time.

“One real weakness in Philadelphia is that there is no publicly available funding to help homeowners maintain their historic homes, and that’s something that we have talked about with city officials, with city council, with the mayor’s office,” he added. “There really needs to be a fund that homeowners can apply to if their property is designated historic — especially for low to moderate income homeowners.”

Although there isn’t a city fund or initiative to help offset maintenance costs for historic homeowners in Philadelphia, a few state and federal tax incentives could be helpful to some historically-designated property owners — including landlords and developers who might not otherwise pursue preservation.

“Not many property owners or homeowners have a lot of expertise about what’s best for a historic building to maintain its value and its appearance,” Steinke said. “So when historic districts are in place, you actually have access to experts who know the best practices and can share them with you and help you find solutions to the problems you’re trying to solve.”

The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia collaborated with the Washington Square West Civic Association to publish a manual that will be released in late spring or early summer. It will provide information about historic practices for windows, doorways, carpentry, masonry and roofs pertaining to the area’s buildings.

There’s been an increase in low-income households in Philadelphia’s historic districts and top earners are moving in at a slower rate than in neighborhoods in the rest of the city.

Racial diversity is shifting in there, too. Although these districts tend to have whiter populations, a report published by the Preservation Alliance shows that non-white homeownership in Philly’s historic districts has increased significantly since 2010. The number of non-white homeowners and Black and Hispanic residents is on the rise in these districts, even as diversity has slowed in other neighborhoods.

“We think [this report] shows that historic designation is not an obstacle to housing production or population growth,” Steinke said.

Steinke argues that the buildings in Washington Square West have economic value not only to those who own or utilize the buildings but to the city as a whole. They’re an economic engine — creating jobs and drawing tourists. Almost 6% of Philadelphia’s jobs are in historic districts, including nearly 10% of small business jobs, 13% of new jobs, and almost 17% of creative jobs.

The 250th anniversary of the United States will bring visitors hoping to immerse themselves in Philadelphia’s history. Visit Philly estimates the events could contribute up to $2.5 billion to the city’s economy.

Some funding is making its way to historic districts in preparation for the events by way of grants for programming and beautification projects. But that doesn’t make them an accessible place to do business.

Historic districts aren’t necessarily start-up friendly. Commercial rent tends to be higher there too — a frequent complaint among LGBTQ+ business owners who want to open brick-and-mortar locations in the Gayborhood but are priced out.

(This article was originally published by the Philadelphia Gay News and is part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories at economicopportunitylab.com.)

Barbara (“Boo”) Easter Price, a pioneering figure in the women’s music movement, died Tuesday, Aug. 4 in Oakland, Calif. Price produced some of the earliest women’s music concerts as a new lesbian-feminist culture was taking shape, and was a driving force behind the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival which ran from 1976 to 2015 – a flagship event in the movement, and the largest women’s music festival in North America. Price was 82. 

“Her vision from the very beginning was how complex and how wide the whole phenomenon of women’s music could be, and how far we could carry it beyond the multi-purpose rooms and church basements into Town Hall and the Palace of Fine Arts and major media,” says singer-songwriter Margie Adam, for whom Price served as manager, agent, producer and attorney from 1975 to 1984, and, for part of that time, her romantic partner.

“I think when she heard Cris Williamson, Vicki Randle and me sing at the Embassy Theater in 1974, she grasped that this thing we were just beginning to call women’s music could actually be a soundtrack for the women’s liberation movement – that it could be an activator and a healing, empowering tool.” 

Arguably, nowhere was that emerging culture of music, feminism and community more fully realized than at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. 

At its peak, 8,000 women, predominantly lesbians, came from around the world to gather for a week in August. Camping, music, dance performances, workshops and the requisite tofu and beans were just a few of the innumerable offerings in this rite of passage for a generation of lesbians in a time when there were few safe and free environments available.

Alicia Davis of Michigan remembers the festival foremost for its sense of community. “The feeling of not having to make myself smaller to fit into the world, but rather the feeling that I could be happy, loud and  share my opinions and feel valued, even when there were disagreements among people,” she says. “There was a shared respect that I didn’t feel outside of the festival walls. The festival shaped what I thought women could do in the world, the entire camp was made by women: electricians, plumbers, cooks, carpenters, singers, artists of every stripe… “

The sense of shared experience followed women long after they left “the land.”

In the 1980s, drivers across the U.S. would exchange knowing glances when passing a car with the familiar “See you in August!” bumper sticker. It was the original IYKYK. 

The Festival was also an important showcase for emerging and established musicians, including Holly Near, Meg Christian, Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco. The list of alumni is vast and stretches across genres from classical to Afro-centric percussion. To name just a few: Casselberry-DuPree, Phranc, Heather Bishop, Ubaka Hill, big band Deuce, flutist Kay Gardner, Edwina Lee Tyler, Lynn Breedlove-fronted punk band Tribe 8, pianist Mary Watkins, and Cultural Heritage Choir founder Linda Tillery who remembers Boo as the big sister she never had.

“I could go to her with anything, and she would listen and give counsel. She was always supportive of me and usually right,” the singer and arranger says.

And while Michigan wasn’t the only festival in the country, it inspired people like marriage equality activist and comedian Robin Tyler who attended Michigan because of Price, and went on to produce her own West Coast music and comedy festivals, as well as the main stage for three Marches on Washington.

“My last memory of Boo was not about Boo Price, the producer or the magician that could create everything,” says Tyler who was also Price’s lover for a time. “It was how lucky I was to have had her in my life at all, and that we were able to love each other and share. She was one of the most influential people of my life.”

Price’s talents were evident across the festival’s sprawling operation which relocated several times over its 40-year existence. In 1982, together with one of the original founders, Lisa Vogel, Price purchased the land that would become the festival’s permanent 650-acre home near Hart, Michigan; in 1983, she became a co-owner and co-producer, a role she held until the two parted ways in 1994.

From 1976–1994, Price was involved in many aspects of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. But her prowess as producer was perhaps most visible at the Night Stage. Her contemporaries have vivid memories of an opening ceremony with an aerialist swinging on a trapeze from an oak tree, while jazz artist Rhiannon performed on vocals.

“Sometimes it started with a parade or a procession and percussion, and sometimes there were stilt walkers – and so there was always this production about you as you were coming to Night Stage,” remembers Sändra Washington, who performed with her twin sister Sharon as the Washington Sisters. As a performer, Washington recalled the wall of energy rushing at her from the audience.

“It was her desire to create a thing, a space, an event that was really magnificent – and that showed in everything she did, whether or not she was organizing a tour, or she was organizing a party, or events at the [Montclair] club,” says Washington. “Boo really specialized in creating a whole vibe around the event, the space, the production, so that you felt something special when you came into a space that Boo had created.”

“There was never a space that felt as positive, overwhelming, and energetic as the crowd at Michigan.”

Kathryn A. Willmore, co-founder of feminist journal Sojourner, remembers how Michigan grew into something bigger than anticipated – and how instrumental Price was in elevating the rudimentary systems needed to support it. One year, Willmore brought copies of Sojourner to the festival, hoping to connect with other people publishing women’s papers. “But there was no system for communicating any of that really. So I just tacked a note on a tree of that location, and there were about 30 of us that came together.” 

Price, Willmore says, helped put systems in place, articulate a vision, and bring in people who could then carry it forward.

“Boo really empowered so many women in so many dimensions. I think that is one of the overarching themes of her life, and certainly in music production… and her confidence was infectious. So people who had never done something grew into becoming experts. I think that she inspired and empowered.”

Willmore first met Price in 1961 at Mt. Holyoke just after the women arrived for the start of college. “There were all these girls in this half-empty dorm in the middle of a hurricane, and Boo started going around to everyone’s room to introduce herself. Then she got to my room… and that was the beginning of this lifelong friendship.”

The importance of what Price created cannot be overstated, nor the reach and durability of the connections formed in the space she helped build.

Just last month, a French woman found this writer on Instagram 40 years after the Festival and claimed I invited her into my tent. We have been corresponding since this improbable reconnection (though the question of who did the inviting is under dispute):

Emmanuelle Gachet, now a writer and professor at Université de Nantes, reflects on her experience:

“In 1986, I step onto an island populated by six thousand women. I come from France, from a rural area, and I am twenty years old. Never before have I felt such a powerful energy. Here, lesbianism is the norm. I don’t have to justify my place. For the first time, I am not a minority. At the time, I am broke. The community welcomes me with sisterhood. I take part in artistic and political workshops, without always realizing their significance. I discover music without male voices. Women playing, singing, improvising, taking the stage. A stage of their own. Music becomes a common language, a way of recognizing one another, of celebrating who we are and what we can create together… I leave with the feeling that I am leaving a world that may never exist again… “

Price’s influence extended beyond the festival arena. The MSU Libraries document the breadth of her production work, including the Women on Wheels Tour in 1976; a celebration for the opening of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party in 1979; concert closing the ERA Campaign at Constitution Hall with Margie Adam and Sweet Honey in the Rock; and, decades later, the 2008 San Francisco City Hall memorial for lesbian rights pioneer Del Martin. She also established Women in Production in 1976, which hired and trained primarily lesbian technicians and production staff.

Price co-founded Pleiades Records with Margie Adam in 1975, producing and promoting Adam’s first four albums. She had an eye for the entire presentation – from press kits and photography to album covers – and for how the emerging women’s music movement projected itself to the world. Price produced a 50-city tour promoting Adam’s first album, culminating at the historic National Women’s Conference in Houston in 1977, where Adam performed “We Shall Go Forth!” as 10,000 women joined in three-part harmony.

“When Boo and I began to work together, both of us were convinced that we should have that phrase, ‘Women’s music by women about women for everyone.’ And that was not a point of view that was agreed upon by everybody in women’s music,” Adam says. “We had wiggle room in there, and we had controversy, and we had continuums.” Ultimately, Price wanted the music “to get out as far as it can go.”

Barbara Easter Price was born on Oct. 8, 1943 in Lafayette, Ind. She received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Mount Holyoke College in 1965, and Juris Doctor from UC Davis in 1976.

She brought her legal background, organizational skills and business acumen to everything she touched – including the justice system, most notably through her work on child custody cases, a focus that grew out of her own experience. 

In 1978 she co-authored a law review article on lesbian custody proceedings and how attorneys could best prepare, at a time when lesbians were viewed unfavorably by the courts and “Sexual Orientation Disturbances” remained a psychiatric diagnosis.

“People forget what it was like,” says attorney Diane Gelon, who first met Price in 1977 at the women’s conference in Houston. “The lesbian mother would not have even had what we would look at now as normal access to that child because the fear was that the kids would be gay or lesbian, or there would be some amount of gender confusion, or they would suffer some kind of psychological harm… These are the myths that Boo wrote about and tried to address.”

Earlier in her career, she also worked at the White House for the Food for Peace Program, where she helped organize a Latin American tour for First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. She also worked with the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders. Price later became active in Bay Area Lesbians in Law, the Lesbian Rights Project, Lyon-Martin Clinic, the National Lesbian Feminist Organization, National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and Women and the Law.

Whether through politics, advocacy or music, much of Price’s work was centered around creating spaces for women.

Following her tenure with the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and a brief hiatus, Price couldn’t help but create another gathering place. She had been regularly driving past an old building, originally established as a social and literary club in 1928. It still had its projection room, stage and lightboard. She knew she had to have it.

 “She just was always producing, even when she had stopped,” says Sharon J. Washington.

 Price purchased the building in 1996 and, after a thorough renovation, opened the Montclair Women’s Cultural Arts Club, which became home to the Montclair Women’s Big Band, which she co-founded with trumpeter Ellen Seeling in 1998. Over the next two decades, the predominantly lesbian space became a vital gathering hub, hosting more than 2,000 events – high-toned parties, workshops, theater, dance, concerts, and more.

“Her Valentine’s Day dances were extraordinary,” says Sändra Washington, who remembers four-course plated meals and, like many of Price’s friends, volunteered at the club.

When the club closed in 2015, luminaries of women’s music came together for farewell performances, and the San Francisco Bay Times chronicled the extraordinary range of what had taken place there: more than 500 birthday celebrations, 150 concerts (“which we can attest were fabulous,” the paper wrote), countless workshops, arts and cultural events.

“Whatever Boo had built, whether it was the club or her home – that was our second home,” says Sändra Washington.

“Buying that club was in some ways a transgressive action, but at the same time, it was saying we belong here,” says Margie Adam. “We belong everywhere. Women’s music belongs everywhere, and that was her vision from the moment that I met her.”

“I think of Boo as someone who inspired and empowered women everywhere,” says Kathryn Willmore. “She herself was a fearless explorer, and she instilled that spirit into so many other women who would never imagine themselves doing the things that they did. And it wasn’t just in music.”

Willmore remembers Price’s first foray into scuba diving. “She was a good swimmer, but there she was, completely underwater with this mask on, not being able to see much in front of her. So she just kept her eyes on the fins of the guide in front of her.”

She woke up the next morning and said, “Let’s do that again.”

“And she just fell in love with it, became an expert diver, and then inspired so many other women – including me,” says Willmore, who would never have imagined venturing into the sea’s depths had it not been for Price.

Price soon convinced others to join her, and organized trips over the years to explore earth’s bounteous ocean offerings – women traveling the world from the Caribbean to the Solomon Islands and sharing in the joy that Price found amid the coral reefs of Indonesia.

Price is survived by her son, Andrés Garcia Price; daughter-in-law, Katie Garcia; granddaughter, Tallulah Katherine Garcia; nieces Melissa Price and her husband, Donal, and Cynthia Price Czabala and her husband, Tom; and an expansive community of chosen family, friends, and beneficiaries of her generous and unstoppable spirit.

“Many of you know that Boo’s health had been in decline for some time,” Kathryn Willmore, Sharon J. Washington, and Margie Adam wrote in announcing their friend’s passing. “Over this past weekend, she had a serious heart attack and was being cared for in the hospital, with her son Andrés and family with her much of the time. Yesterday afternoon, she noticed a partially open door in her room and asked the nurse if that was the exit, because she was ready to leave. A few hours later, she did just that – moving on to another realm, but never out of our hearts.”

James Dale, the gay former Boy Scout whose landmark Supreme Court case established the organization’s First Amendment right to exclude him, has filed a second federal lawsuit against the Department of Defense over its relationship with Scouting America.

The Aug. 3 lawsuit, which is being exclusively reported by the Blade, seeks records about how the Pentagon is enforcing its ongoing compliance reviews with Scouting America, escalating Dale’s legal challenge to what he and his attorney, Isaac Park, characterize as government pressure on a private organization to change its policies.

The filing, which has not previously been reported, comes months after Dale sued the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the memorandum outlining the department’s agreement with Scouting America. That first lawsuit resulted in the Pentagon releasing the memorandum just three weeks after Dale filed his complaint.

Now, Dale and Park want to know what happened after the memorandum was signed — including how the Pentagon is conducting its 90-day compliance reviews and whether those reviews are being used to pressure Scouting America to make additional changes.

The second lawsuit cites the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in NRA v. Vullo, which addressed when government officials cross the constitutional line by using their authority to pressure private organizations or entities into taking action the government itself could not directly require.

“I find myself in this interesting, ironic place where I’m defending the decision that expelled me,” Dale told The Washington Blade. “That said, Scouts, you have a First Amendment shield to protect yourselves from the DOD.”

Dale’s legal fight comes as Scouting America faces pressure from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has criticized the organization’s embrace of LGBTQ youth, girls and Scouts of color.

In recent years, Scouting America has made significant progress toward becoming a more inclusive organization — from removing its bans on LGBTQ Scouts and leaders, to providing opportunities for women and girls to participate in Scouting, to making Scouts of color feel more supported and visible within the organization.

Those changes angered Hegseth, who has never been a Scout, to the point that he threatened to sever the military’s longstanding ties with the organization.

Such a move would mean that the U.S. military would no longer provide medical and logistical support for the National Jamboree, the massive gathering of Scouts in West Virginia that typically draws about 20,000 participants. It would also prevent Scout troops from meeting on U.S. or overseas military installations, where many bases host active Scouting programs.

In February, before that threat was carried out, Hegseth announced that the Pentagon had reached an agreement with Scouting America that he said would refocus the organization away from diversity initiatives and other policies he characterized as “woke.” He again threatened to end the military’s longstanding support for the organization if it failed to comply within six months.

Hegseth also placed particular emphasis on Scouting America’s policies regarding transgender youth, saying the organization would require members to use their “biological sex at birth and not gender identity.”

But Scouting America President and CEO Roger Krone struck a different tone.

“We have transgender people in our program and we’ll have transgender people in our program going forward,” Krone told The Associated Press in February.

The conflicting messages prompted Dale to dig deeper.

“I wanted to get to the bottom of what deal had been struck with Scouting America under pressure,” Dale said. “What pressure did the Pentagon apply on a private youth organization that had a right to determine their own members?”

Dale filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the memorandum between the Pentagon and Scouting America. When the Defense Department did not provide the document, he turned to Park, a former Supreme Court clerk, and sued the department for its release.

Park said they deliberately took a narrow approach to the FOIA lawsuit, seeking a single document rather than launching a broader fight over thousands of pages of government records.

“We had one document that we really wanted, which was this memorandum, and we were going to ensure that there’s like a lead-pipe, stone-cold case for disclosure,” Park said.

The strategy worked quickly. Three weeks after the lawsuit was filed, the Pentagon released the memorandum.

But the document did not end Dale and Park’s questions. Instead, they said, it raised new ones.

Hegseth had publicly described a six-month window for Scouting America to make changes. But the memorandum provides for an ongoing compliance mechanism, with reviews taking place every 90 days.

For Dale and Park, that raises the possibility that the Pentagon could continue pressing Scouting America to change its policies long after the February agreement was announced.

Park described their concern as “jawboning” — the use of government power or influence to pressure a private organization into changing its policies without the government directly ordering it to do so.

“We saw in the weeks after the announcement of the memorandum changes being made to Scouting America’s policies,” Park said. “Them saying one thing, the department saying a slightly different thing, and our first question then was, of course, like, what is actually in this memorandum? Is this how they kind of got what they wanted?”

The memorandum, Park said, “clarified certain questions, but definitely also didn’t contain other changes” that Scouting America had made.

“That naturally arises: Well then, how did those changes come about?” he said.

Dale points to changes at Scouting America’s National Jamboree as an example of what he believes could be the result of the pressure.

The organization removed dedicated spaces for girls, Scouts of color and LGBTQ Scouts at the flagship event, which concluded last week.

“We see spaces for girls being eradicated, spaces for kids of color, spaces for gay people, for trans kids,” Dale said. “It happened at the flagship event of scouting, the jamboree.”

Dale said he fears similar changes could occur at the local level, including at Scout meetings and council events.

“All this document is empowering the government to keep pressing, keep putting pressure on Scouting America,” Dale said. “And what is that doing to American kids?”

The dispute is particularly striking because of Dale’s own history with the organization.

Dale had a long history with Scouting before the organization expelled him in 1990. At the time, he was a 19-year-old student at Rutgers University in New Jersey and was serving as an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 73.

While attending Rutgers, Dale became co-president of the university’s Lesbian/Gay Student Alliance and was interviewed by The Star-Ledger about the health and well-being of LGBTQ students.

The interview made its way to Boy Scouts officials. The organization subsequently expelled Dale after learning that he was gay, describing him as an “active sodomite.”

Dale sued the Boy Scouts under New Jersey’s public accommodations law and initially won. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in his favor, finding that the state’s interest in preventing discrimination outweighed the organization’s claimed right to exclude him.

The Boy Scouts appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 decision in 2000, the Supreme Court reversed the New Jersey ruling, holding that forcing the Boy Scouts to accept Dale as an openly gay assistant scoutmaster would violate the organization’s First Amendment right to freedom of expressive association.

The Scouts had argued that homosexual conduct was inconsistent with the values it sought to instill in young people.

Dale was devastated by the ruling.

“I thought it was the wrong decision at the time,” he said.

But the constitutional protection the Supreme Court recognized in his case is now at the center of Dale’s argument against the Pentagon.

The Boy Scouts’ policies have changed dramatically since Dale’s case. The organization began allowing openly gay youth in 2013 and gay adult leaders in 2015. It later expanded its policies to include transgender youth and adults.

The Boy Scouts of America formally changed its name to Scouting America in 2025.

Dale said those changes were made voluntarily — precisely the kind of private organizational decision that the Supreme Court’s ruling in his case protected.

“They did it voluntarily,” Dale said. “They won the Supreme Court case against me.”

Now, he argues, Scouting America should invoke that same protection against the government.

Park said that is the central constitutional question behind their efforts.

“In 1990, when he was expelled from the Scouts for being gay, and in 2000, after a narrow 5-4 loss at the court, we were told that a private entity, an organization like Scouting, are allowed to set their own membership policies,” Park said.

Over the following two decades, Park said, Scouting America changed those policies on its own.

“We won the culture war,” Park said. “Organizations like Scouting America decided on their own, of their own free will, that actually what they want is to be inclusive with respect to gay youth, with respect to trans youth.”

The question now, Park said, is whether the government can pressure an organization to reverse those voluntary decisions.

“I think that the story here is that of jawboning,” Park said. “Our question has always been the how of how this administration is achieving whatever policy goals, whatever ideological outcomes that they want.”

Dale sees the issue as extending well beyond Scouting America.

“It’s not even about the scouting program,” Dale said. “It is, but it’s much bigger than that. It’s about really what the executive branch is doing to private organizations that have a right to set their own policies for membership.”

Park said the argument could appeal to people across the political spectrum.

“During the Biden administration, it was COVID policy, and it was the NRA that the right was screaming about jawboning,” Park said. “This is a bipartisan issue in the sense that no one thinks the government is allowed to do this.”

For now, Dale and Park are seeking more information.

Park said their review of the memorandum left them with additional questions about the Pentagon’s relationship with Scouting America and whether the 90-day compliance mechanism is being used to continue influencing the organization.

“Disclosure or transparency is the right remedy for this,” Park said.

Dale’s interest in Scouting is not merely legal.

He said he still believes deeply in the organization and had returned to involvement with Scouting only recently, after years away.

“I love scouting,” Dale said. “I fought for a decade to get back in scouting.”

That makes his current position all the more unusual.

The organization that once fought him in court is now the organization he is trying to defend from government interference.

“I never thought that would be the case,” Dale said. “That would be saving queer kids.”

Dale said he hopes Scouting America will ultimately stand up for the policies it adopted after his Supreme Court case.

“They didn’t want gay people in the ’90s. Fine, I thought that was wrong,” Dale said. “But now they want to have trans kids. They want to have girls. They want to have kids of color.”

“But Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth don’t want them to,” he said.

The Pentagon declined to comment on Dale’s allegations or the ongoing litigation.

“As a matter of policy, we do not comment on ongoing litigation,” a Pentagon spokesperson told The Washington Blade via email.

The Blade also contacted Scouting America seeking clarification about its agreement with the Pentagon, including whether Hegseth or other Defense Department officials had pressured the organization to remove or alter policies protecting LGBTQ Scouts, girls, or Scouts of color.

Scouting America did not respond to a request for comment.

For Dale, the fight has brought his long-running legal battle with the Scouts full circle.

He spent the 1990s arguing that the organization should not be permitted to exclude him because he was gay. The Supreme Court ultimately said the Scouts had a constitutional right to make that choice.

Now Dale is arguing that the government cannot force the organization to make a different choice.

“I realized over the course of my life that I expected the institution to save me,” Dale said. “I expected the Boy Scouts of America to do the right thing. I expected the legal system, the Supreme Court, to do the right thing.”

“Neither one did,” he said. “You got to fight for yourselves.”