It focuses on Steve Cozza and Dave Rice who join together to fight against the policy, and also relates the stories of two gay men who were expelled from the organization, and fought back in the courts.

The film also includes two legal challenges to the scout's anti-gay policy by Tim Curran and James Dale, who were both expelled for being gay.

[1][2] So together with his father and Dave Rice, another scoutmaster who had been ousted from the organization for speaking out in support of Cozza, decided to form their own group and called it Scouting for All (SFA), who accepted members regardless of their sexual orientation.

[3] Tom Shepard said he took on the project in 1998 after reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a newly formed organization called SFA, whose primary goal was challenging the anti-gay ban in the BSA.

He found that the Cozza family and SFA were interested in his idea of expanding their press coverage beyond the local media, by producing a documentary that would be nationally broadcast on PBS.

[1][2] David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said the "most impressive accomplishment" of the film is the complete impartiality in the way Shepard portrays the Boy Scouts as an institution.

[5] Film Threat praised Shepard for his portrayal of "Steven Cozza as just a normal kid who had the good fortune to be raised by a couple of great parents...it's unfathomable that a young man could take on such a sensitive cause, in a truly insensitive age bracket…and be accepted for it".

[7] The Bay Area Reporter wrote that it was a "truly moving documentary", and that Shepard "brings a nice balance to the subject, choosing to focus on the personal impact of the anti-gay policy on the lives who are fighting it".

[8] Joe Leydon of Variety said Cozza is impressive as an "unaffectedly decent individual who simply wants to do the right thing" and Rice is sympathetic as well.