Also, an Eagle and past council executive board officer. I read B-P's biography 10 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Baden_Powell
The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden-Powell, by Tim Jeal, © 1990
Baden-Powell founded the world-wide Scouting movement in the UK during 1907. Tim Jeal's biography of B-P discusses his relationship with his close army friend, Kenneth McLaren.[46]:217–218[47]:48 Jeal concludes that there is no conclusive evidence that this friendship was physical[7]:82. He then examines Baden-Powell's views on women, his appreciation of the male form, his military relationships, and his marriage, indicating that Baden-Powell could have been a repressed homosexual.[7]:103 Jeal's conclusion is shared by some biographers and disputed by others, but not yet examined in any detail by scholars.[48]:6 (The evidence has to be viewed in the context of the times (just like studying the Bible, i.e., Victorian England. It is difficult for modern Americans to appreciate this.)
1. His father was an Anglican minister. He died when B-P was 3 years old. His widowed mother raised him along with 6 siblings. She was a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed in life.
2. B-P had a very close friendship with Kenneth McLaren in their early army service years. McLaren would later marry and die while relatively young.
3. He had very few, if any, female friends over the course of his life.
4. There is no evidence of him ever having a romantic girl friend.
5. His record of correspondence expressed apathy for the female body.
6. His record of correspondence showed a keen appreciation for the male body.
7. His record of correspondence with the headmaster of his old public school, Charterhouse School, included a request to see, again, a photo album of nude male students.
8. As a child, his sense of dramatics was encouraged which developed into a fondness for acting out skits and plays.
9. He was especially fond of the play/book, “Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up” which appeared in 1904.
10. He married Olave St Clair Soames in 1912 when he was 55 and she was 23 (5 years after he founded the Scouting movement in the UK.) Her father thought B-P led her own in hopes of marriage. The evidence does not indicate B-P behaved improprely. Her father threatened to publically humiliate B-P if he did not marry his daughter.
11. The evidence suggested that their marriage was not romantically passionate.
12. After siring 3 children with Olave, he arranged separate bedrooms for Olave and him in their home for the rest of his life.
13. An account of an incident which happened in the early years of Scouting in the U.K. was included. B-P was pioneering the start of a long term encampment for boys (i.e., summer camp) and training center for adult volunteers. His friend, William McLaren, purchased the Cranshaw estate in Sewardstonebury, Epping Forest, close to Chingford, London. He went on to donate the property to the Scout Association in 1919. This property became known as Gilwell Park and is still in use today. Anyway, there was an incident in the 1920s at Gilwell Park where an adult Scouter sexually molested a youth Scout during an encampment. This problem has plagued Scouting since its earliest days.
Oh, for God's sake! He was an Englishman!
Someone is "trying us on" with that one .... lots of English husbands were lecherous but never romantic or "passionate". In fact, George S. Patton, in the late '30's, turned down a plum assignment to the London embassy because he had a teenaged daughter and knew what "a certain type" of English "gentlemen" was like, having served with them in World War I and having heard them talk about the distaff side candidly, among themselves.
No, that one won't wash as evidence for homosexuality. Sorry.
Quite a history, thanks. As reflected in the rest of society, the issue of the safety of young males in the presence of repressed or not repressed homosexuals (who are really also are pedophiles, boys only).
The part in the history of LBP about his interest in seeing the photos of nude male students, recalled to me why these photos were taken in those days. Students had photos made of them for medical evaluation of range of motion of the limbs, to assess spinal alignment (detect scoliosis) and polio development. This was done in males and females, and was part of medical training in orthopedics and pediatrics, and a standard of medical practice. Was done in the US from the 1880’s and recent scandal as to where the photos ended up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_photos
Does seem odd an interest in the male photos only. From a time period of emphasis on classical education (Greek/Roman classicism) then the human form was glorified (not unlike the nordic/aryan propaganda of the nazis in film and photo) but also provided cover for the prurient.
It has indeed been a problem for scouting, and with girl scouting as well. What is most irritating is the “dumbing down” demanding agenda that this is normal— when it isn’t, even as they try to make some moral equivalence to rabid heterosexuality. Point missed is that both are wrong in childhood development, and the innocent are preyed upon. As a student of history, obviously cultural norms were very different in ancient Greece (and arguably led to the downfall of Greece and the Roman empire). Strange world we have to deal with to raise our children, and the statists are not “moral” at all.