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WATCH: A Boy Scout Web Series With a Gay Agenda

WATCH: A Boy Scout Web Series With a Gay Agenda

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Jeffrey Simon quit the Boy Scouts due to its discriminatory policies against gay adults. Now, he's hoping his new web series will help reform the organization he loves.

dnlreynolds

There are less than three days left to help crowdsource a series about gays in scouting.

Camp Abercorn, a web series about a Boy Scouts camp, is shining a spotlight on the youth organization's discriminatory policy that bars gay adults from serving as leaders or volunteers. Its writer and director, Jeffrey Simon, was an Eagle Scout who quit the Boy Scouts of America after coming out due to this official policy.

Simon hopes this project will help change the BSA, with which he was involved for 16 years, into a more welcoming organization.

"In telling our story we hope to lend support to what America needs now more than ever; the awesome potential of Scouting for shaping boys into the men who will lead us into the future; men who treat everyone equally regardless of their gender or sexual preference," reads a statement on the Indiegogo page.

The web series has raised more than $65,000 of its $100,000 goal, which would fund the pilot episode. A first season of seven 30-minute episodes is in the works, with a planned release on YouTube.

Can Camp Abercorn reach its goal and help enact positive change in Scouting? As the campaign page concludes, "An Eagle Scout follows through."

Or as Pascal Tessier, the first out Eagle Scout since the organization lifted its repeal on gay youth earlier this year, told the organization's head, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in an open letter published Wednesday in Time:

"Openly gay adults will eventually be allowed in Scouting, Mr. Gates," he writes. "As support for equality continues to grow, Americans will soon demand it. The question before you, then, is not whether the ban should end, but how many more young people like me will be a victim of your failed leadership if you do nothing."

Watch the campaign video below, and contribute to the campaign and watch the trailer at Indiegogo.com.

dnlreynolds
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Daniel Reynolds

Daniel Reynolds is the editor of social media for The Advocate. A native of New Jersey, he writes about entertainment, health, and politics.
Daniel Reynolds is the editor of social media for The Advocate. A native of New Jersey, he writes about entertainment, health, and politics.