Description: The story of how Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster James Dale's decision to come out as a gay man led to a historic Supreme Court case.
Brief description: Richard J. Ellis is Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics at Willamette University. He is the author of many books including Presidential Travel: The Journey from George Washington to George Bush and To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance, both published by Kansas.
Review Quotes:
"With the Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale case, the Constitution becomes a Procrustean bed--in fact, a whole room of them. Ellis' account is riveting."--Karen Orren, , Professor of Political Science at UCLA
"Richard Ellis has produced a thoroughly compelling and readable account of a century's worth of efforts to hold the Boy Scouts to their own standards for fairness, loyalty and justice. It's the most comprehensive and accurate narrative of early legal actions against the Scouts I've ever seen; I learned things I didn't know about my own lawsuit."--Tim Curran, journalist and plaintiff, Curran v Mt. Diablo Council, 1981
"I knew the broad outline of the Dale case and the cultural issues it raised, but Ellis's carefully researched book opens up layers of complexity and subtlety that show me even more about the dramatic intersection of lives, ideas, laws, and institutions involved with landmark court decisions like Dale. I am grateful that so skilled an historian and writer as Ellis has told this story-behind-the-story."--Jay Mechling, author of On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth