Finding pride and a safe space in Rover Scouts

There will be a lot of purple on show today, as LGBTQIA+ youth and allies celebrate Wear It Purple Day.

By wearing purple, Australians demonstrate to rainbow young people that they are celebrated and respected, acknowledging all have the right to be proud of who they are and who they are becoming. Here at Scouts NSW, a Scout is respectful and we are a proudly diverse organisation, which actively celebrates LGBTQIA+ diversity, inclusion and pride.

This year’s theme – Your Passion, Your Pride – is a call to rainbow youth to express their true selves to the world and chase their dreams.

Today, Sydney North Region Leader and Rover Scout Harley shares their story.

I joined Scouts in 2021 at the age of 19 and by this time I already knew I identified as non-binary but was still heavily closeted. I hadn’t told my parents, nor my uncle who was also my Group Leader. Only a very small, select group of friends were aware.

I would often sit in meetings, cringing every time someone used my deadname but unable to voice my discomfort out of fear of what the reaction would be. I didn’t know of any other queer people in Scouts and it wasn’t until I attended my first Leader course that I met not only another queer person in Scouts, but the person who would be organising the Scouts float for that year’s Mardi Gras Parade.

Read about Scouts NSW at Mardi Gras

For me, this was an eye-opening moment. There were other members of the LGBTQIA+ community in Scouts. I applied for the Mardi Gras float, and while I didn’t get on it that year, I instead volunteered to be on the medical team for the Parade, another one of my passions.

The more I became involved in Scouts, the more I realised there were other members of the community in Scouts. Meeting the people I have met helped me develop more self-confidence to openly express myself as non-binary. When I joined Rover Scouts (aged 18-25) in 2023, I joined as Harley, told everyone my pronouns – they/them – and was excited to start a new chapter in my Scouting journey. While they struggled at first to get it right, with a little education, my whole Unit now understands the importance of respecting people’s pronouns and have a greater place to be myself without fear of being bullied or harassed.

One of my proudest moments of being a Scout though has come from attending Blacktown Rovers’ Queer Formal. This year was the first I had heard of the event, which has now been running for three years, and I was thrilled to find out it was also open for Venturer Scouts (aged 14-18) to attend. This event was run as a safe space for those both in an out of the closet, with extra precautions put in to ensure no one was accidentally outed.

Materials were supplied by MINUS18, another LGBTQIA+ youth organisation, that had information on who to talk to if you need help, advice and lots of other important details to educate and assist those who may not be able to access this information outside of the safe space Blacktown has created. The joy I saw on the faces of those in attendance who were able to be themselves without fear of judgement really proved why events like this are important to have in Scouts.

Scouts has allowed me to proudly be me, and I hope with events like Queer Formal, we can create a safer space for LGBTQIA+ youth to be able to express themselves and feel accepted in the Scouting Movement.