I joined the Boy Scouts—today, known as Scouting America—when I was 8 years old. 

In 1990, days before my 20th birthday, the organization told me I was no longer welcome. 

I had earned the Eagle Scout rank. I had spent my youth giving back. My childhood felt like a lie.

Their reason: Scouts must be “morally straight.” They argued that being gay was incompatible with the Scout oath to lead with “honesty, to be clean in your speech and actions, and to be a person of strong character.” 

I sued. Lambda Legal took my case. For 10 years, we fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2000, the Court ruled against me, five to four. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote for the majority that the Boy Scouts of America, as a private organization, had a constitutional right to set its own membership standards, even when those standards meant excluding someone like me.

Now, 25 years later, the federal government is doing exactly what the Supreme Court said the government cannot do: pressuring a private organization over who belongs in its program. In my case, New Jersey had........

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