Morally Straight by Mike De Socio - Presentation and Signing

All are invited to join ABC for this excellent presentation and signing on Saturday, June 22nd at 7pm with Mike De Socio discussing his newest book, Morally Straight: How the Fight for LGBTQ+ Inclusion Changed the Boy Scouts - and America. This presentation will be in conversation with Kerri Sullivan; a writer, librarian, and the editor of the anthology New Jersey Fan Club: Artists & Writers Celebrate the Garden State, which was published by Rutgers University Press. She is also the founder of Jersey Collective, a multi-faceted project about New Jersey which includes a Jersey-themed literary series.

If you wish to pre-order the event book, click HERE

A little bit about the book and the author:

Mike is an independent journalist based in upstate New York who writes about cities, climate change, and the LGBTQ+ community. His work has been published in the Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Fortune, Insider, Xtra, YES! Magazine, and more.

Morally Straight is the essential narrative that illuminates the battle for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Boy Scouts of America, a decades-long struggle led by teenagers, parents, activists, and everyday Americans.

Weaving in his own experience as a scout and journalist, Mike De Socio’sMorally Straight tells a story that plays out over the course of twenty-five years, beginning in an era when gay rights were little more than a cultural sideshow; when same-sex marriage was not even on the radar; and when much of the country was recommitting to conservative social mores. It was during this treacherous time that accidental activists emerged, challenging one of America’s most iconic institutions in a struggle that would forever change the country’s view of gay people and the rights they held in society.
In Morally Straight we meet James Dale, the poster child of Scouting who took his fight for inclusion to the Supreme Court; Steven Cozza, the 12-year-old scout in California who started a movement for inclusion called Scouting for All; Jennifer Tyrrell, the lesbian den mother whose expulsion from the Scouts reignited the gay membership controversy; Zach Wahls, the son of lesbian moms who led the final push for policy change; and an array of other previously unknown Scouters who played smaller—but no less crucial—roles in the fight for full inclusion.
Through original interviews and reporting, Morally Straight braids together these characters and brings to life their collective struggle. This is an essential narrative in the American LGBTQ+ rights movement—and a truly American story about the fight for a better future for our nation’s bedrock youth organization.

Host or Publisher Asbury Book Cooperative