A Scout for Life

Gay Eagle Scout Mark LaFontaine nudged the Broward school board to historic heights

Comments (0) By Emily Bliss Thursday, Jan 4 2001

...continued from page 3

LaFontaine spent the next two months under barracks arrest, then five months in psychiatric treatment. He says the psychiatrist told him the military was evaluating him. "They also said they had to validate that my claim [of being homosexual] was accurate," he says. "The doctor was pretty nice about it."

On December 23, 1987, LaFontaine says he was honorably discharged. The Coast Guard would confirm only the dates of his service.

Joshua Prezant

BSA South Florida Council executive Jeffrie Herrmann says avowed homosexuals are unwelcome in his organization

More About

After his discharge LaFontaine called his mother and father for the first time in eight months. He told them he was gay, an admission that upset his parents. They encouraged him not to tell anyone.

He stayed in Guam two more years. "I was living with someone I was seeing," he says. "He was the first person I was intimate with. He worked on the military base." When his boyfriend ended the relationship, LaFontaine tried to kill himself. "It was stupid. I had gone out, and I drank a lot," he says. "Then I took maximum-strength Tylenol. I probably took 150 to 200 pills." The cocktail of Tylenol and White Russians knocked him out cold. A friend, Kelvin McClamb, dragged LaFontaine to his car and took him to the hospital, where doctors pumped his stomach.

Two months after his suicide attempt, LaFontaine flew home.

He spent the next few years working at Wendy's and Kmart in Coral Springs. Then, his best friend, Dennis Torres, became sick with AIDS. "When he was dying, he said, "I want you to go back to school,'" LaFontaine muses. "That was the hardest thing that has ever happened to me. It was a big turning point, a smack in the face." By January he was enrolled in Florida Metropolitan University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in accounting in October 1997 and went directly to Florida International University to earn a master's degree in tax accounting. In 1999 LaFontaine incorporated his own accounting firm, CheckMark Services.

Finally his life was going smoothly. He was teaching finance classes at Florida Metropolitan and saving money for a house. Then, in early September, turbulence hit once again. But for the first time, LaFontaine generated the uproar.

At the encouragement of friends, LaFontaine spent the afternoon of Saturday, September 9, at Wilton Manors City Hall, in the heat of an ongoing debate about withholding tax dollars from the Scouts. Conservatives held an antigay rally, so LaFontaine and others staged a counter protest. "I wore my Scout uniform, and that thrust me into the papers. I wore the uniform because I have the right to wear the uniform. But more importantly I wore it to make a statement," he says. "As an Eagle Scout, and a Scout for life, I don't feel like the Boy Scouts have the right to make a policy that can exclude me."

LaFontaine became an activist "instantaneously," he explains. "You think of the ramifications at the same time you're dealing with it. I wasn't going to let someone come into where I live and tell me I'm not a person of good character. My parents weren't too thrilled with the publicity, but it all seemed to snowball. The issue was [then] brought up in Fort Lauderdale City Hall. I felt obligated to go to speak."

On September 11, for the second time in his life, LaFontaine spoke publicly on behalf of a cause. "It was hectic," he remembers. "It's nerve-racking any time you get up in front of a group of people." The meeting, at which commissioners voted against granting money to the Scouts, was a primer on the human capacity for contention and furor. LaFontaine listened to hours of irate ranting, impassioned testimony, and hateful rhetoric.

"I was shocked and surprised," LaFontaine recalls, adding that the most objectionable part was that children were listening. "The fact that they claimed to be religious Christians -- I found it to be ironic. They were claiming to be concerned about children's morals and values, but they were in staunch opposition to the principles of Scouting."

After the hearing LaFontaine had another new experience: Television reporters accosted him. "Everybody was blurting out questions," he explains. "You can't concentrate like that." So he ordered the reporters to step away, pull back their microphones, and take turns. Without thinking he engineered a press conference. The media used him, and he used the media.

For the rest of September, LaFontaine was busy preparing statements, public speaking, and consulting with advisers at both Lambda Legal Defense, a New York based gay-advocacy group, and Scouting for All. On September 18 he spoke at the school board's Diversity Committee meeting. After the hearing, which was full of fireworks, LaFontaine and White announced their intentions to apply to be troop leaders. "I didn't want to see an innocent youth or adults outed and pushed into the spotlight," LaFontaine explains.

The next day he again addressed the Fort Lauderdale City Commission. With 80 speakers on the agenda and police managing the crowds, the second meeting was as contentious and caustic as the first. The commission stood by its decision to deny a $10,000 grant to the Scouts' school program for at-risk and disabled children.