Ex-Scout Leader Invited, Uninvited to Banquet

An 83-year-old former Eagle Scout leader in Connecticut was disinvited to a Boy Scouts banquet after the organization accidentally sent him an invitation.

David Knapp told the New Haven Register that he thought the Boy Scouts of America was extending an olive branch to him, as he was barred from the BSA in 1993 for being gay. However, the invitation was sent to him due to a clerical error for the second year in a row.

"I couldn't believe it," Knapp said of receiving an invitation for the second consecutive year. "I thought, 'Have they had a little change of conscience for the grave injustice of not allowing me to come to the banquet and sponsor a Scout last year?' I'm equally angry again that they sent it [an invitation] to me a second time. ... I'd already been tricked and deceived once."

Knapp joined the Boy Scouts in 1938 and became an Eagle Scout in 1944. He then worked as an executive for the Scouts for a decade, married a woman, but then came out as gay in 1986 and got a divorce. He had volunteered as a Scout leader for several years until 1993, when he was expelled after one of his relatives told the BSA that Knapp is gay.