As expected, on May 24, 2013, the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America voted to end its longstanding ban on gay scouts while retaining its ban on adult leaders and employees. Some people have hailed the move as an important first step. More likely, it is a cynical public relations ploy that will probably not work. The only thing to celebrate is the chagrin the move to admit openly gay scouts has caused bigots.

Activist James Dale in a GLAAD video.

As the Boy Scouts of America National Council gathers in Dallas to reconsider its ban on gay scouts and leaders on May 24, 2013, the real question is not whether they will (as expected) repeal the ban on scouts but retain it for adult scout leaders and employees. The real question is whether whatever they do is too little, too late. The leaders of the Boy Scouts of America have managed to besmirch their own brand, which at one time was as honored and as American as apple pie. The BSA has marginalized itself so as to become little more than a religious organization, largely Southern and rural, more famous for bigotry than for building character.

Mark Carson was murdered in Greenwich Village.

The recent uptick in anti-gay violence, as seen in a riot in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia led by Orthodox priests, brutal gaybashings in France, and the murder of a gay man in Greenwich Village, raises the question of whether progress in the pursuit of equal rights inevitably engenders a backlash.

On May 21, 2013, the United Kingdom's House of Commons passed the marriage equality bill on its third reading by a vote of 366 to 161. The bill now moves to the House of Lords.

On May 21, 1979, after a San Francisco jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against former Supervisor Dan White for the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk and was sentenced to less than eight years in prison for the killings, the city erupted in violence. The White Night Riots may be the most violent episode in the history of the American gay rights movement.

Sally Ride.

On May 20, 2013, President Obama announced that later this year he will bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, on the late astronaut Sally Ride. In addition to being the first woman and youngest person in space, Ride later served as director of NASA's Office of Exploration and became a renowned professor, scientist, and innovator at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. Her lesbianism did not become generally known until July 2012 when the announcement of her death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 61 acknowledged her longtime partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy.

Eric Andresen.

The Boy Scouts of America is scheduled to decide on May 24, 2013 whether to alter its long-standing ban on gay scouts and leaders. The proposal to be put before the roughly 1400 voting members of the BSA National Council would allow the participation of gay scouts, but not gay adult leaders. On the eve of this debate, the father of bullied gay scout Ryan Andresen has spoken out in a video made by Equality California.

Mary Bonauto.

May 17, 2013 is the ninth anniversary of the first legal same-sex marriages in the United States, which came as a result of a historic decision by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The breakthrough came in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which was argued by Mary Bonauto of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) on behalf of seven gay and lesbian couples who had been denied marriage licenses.

On May 17, 2013, France's Constitutional Council rejected an appeal from opponents of same-sex marriage and declared constitutional the marriage equality legislation recently passed by lop-sided margins in the Senate and the National Assembly. On May 18, 2012, President Hollande signed the bill into law. Marriages will begin in ten days.

Pam Crawford, the child's adoptive mother, hopes to prevent other children from being forced to endure unwanted sex assignment surgery.

On May 14, 2013, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced it had filed a groundbreaking lawsuit on behalf of an intersexual child who was subjected to unnecessary and premature surgery by the state of South Carolina. The lawsuit charges that the state of South Carolina violated the child's constitutional rights while in foster care, potentially affecting both reproductive and sexual function.