-Caveat Lector-
Writers Suggest Scout Founder Was Gay
Monday, August 23, 1999
BY ELIZABETH ABBOTT
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- If he had been anybody else, Lord Robert Baden-Powell's
attraction to young men would hardly have amounted to a footnote in his many
biographies. But Baden-Powell wasn't anybody else. He was the founder of the
Boy Scouts, the most successful youth movement in the 20th century, which
just last week reaffirmed its ban on homosexuals.
The swashbuckling Baden-Powell was a revered and almost mythic figure by
the time of his death in 1941. A hero of Britain's Boer War, he went on to
make character-building in youth his lifetime goal. But at least three recent
accounts of Baden-Powell's career have raised some interesting questions
about Baden-Powell's own character:
-- Did he exaggerate his military accomplishments during the Boer War in
South Africa?
-- Did he give credit where credit was due for the idea of the Boy
Scouts, or did he steal it from Ernest Thompson Seton?
Questions of character aside, the biographers also suggest that the
founder of a movement that bans homosexuals was gay.
Although none of the books say Baden-Powell was homosexual, they clearly
make that suggestion, pointing to a long-term relationship he had with a
young fellow officer he called "The Boy" and Baden-Powell's aversion, often
vehemently expressed, to the sexual charms of women.
The Chief Scout, as he was called during his lifetime, liked watching
naked boys swim, he liked looking at photographs of naked boys and he made
light of scoutmasters accused of homosexual activity, according to a 1990
account of Baden-Powell's life by Tim Jeal, a respected British author.
No evidence exists that Baden-Powell acted on his homosexual desires,
Jeal writes in The Boy-Man; The Life of Lord Baden-Powell. But it's hard to
know for sure. Baden-Powell burned most of his personal correspondence before
his death, including copies of his letters to Kenneth McLaren, the young
military officer to whom he was deeply attached.
"Baden-Powell was a repressed homosexual," Jeal said last week from
Cornwall, where he was vacationing.
But Baden-Powell's romantic interest in young men, Jeal added, should be
considered in the context of the times. Born in 1857, Baden-Powell was a
product of the Victorian age, a straight-laced time when sex was considered
"dirty," women who liked sex were considered "bad," and boyhood was
romanticized in plays such as "Peter Pan."
"Strong emotional relationships were thought perfectly normal and
acceptable between men during the nineteenth century . . . " Jeal writes.
That Baden-Powell and McLaren were emotionally involved is unchallenged.
As officers during the Boer War, they tried to room together whenever
possible. And when McLaren was taken prisoner, Baden-Powell went to great
lengths to make sure his friend was well cared for, sending eau de cologne,
wine and a soft mattress, among other items, across enemy lines.
"He clearly was in love with McLaren," author Michael Rosenthal said last
week.
Rosenthal is a professor at Columbia University and author of the 1984
book The Character Factory: Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts and the Imperatives of
Empire.
Baden-Powell eventually married -- at age 55 -- and fathered three
children, but Rosenthal thinks the Chief Scout felt he had to have children
in order for the Scout movement to have credibility. Also, he needed a mate
to help him with Scouting, which Lady Olave Baden-Powell eventually did.
"Was he in love with Olave? Probably not," Rosenthal said.
A spokesman for Boy Scouts of America said Friday that he could not
comment on Baden-Powell's personal life because "we don't know." But, said
Gregg Shields, Baden-Powell's only surviving daughter has denied the recent
suggestions about her father's sexual orientation.
The Boy Scouts trace their ban on homosexuals to 1908, when Baden-Powell
founded the organization. They cite the Scout Law, which says, among other
things, that a Scout should be clean in thought, word and deed. But, in
recent years, a number of lawsuits have challenged the ban, calling it
discriminatory.
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