It’s not that I’m at all surprised that a couple of male camp counselors at a Christian summer camp have been accused of “swinging naked from the rafters” and forcing 10 boys in their charge to play sexually explicit games such as “Naked Mafia” which reportedly involved “inappropriate touching.” It’s also not that I’m surprised the campers had “naked time” in the cabins. What surprises me about the Tribune Democrat news item about the incident is the way the executive director of the camp downplays the whole thing:
“They’re really some quality guys who made some very poor decisions, and unfortunately didn’t discern what was appropriate with regard to these 10 boys,” said Kent Biery, executive director at Summer’s Best Two Weeks.
“The bottom line is we can’t have that here,” he said.
“The purpose of Summer’s Best Two Weeks is to form young leaders who make good decisions. Unfortunately, in something like this, you convey something other than that goal. This will be addressed.”
I literally stared at those paragraphs and blinked for a couple of moments as my brain argued with itself over it. He couldn’t possibly be making an attempt at a “Oppsie! Our bad! It won’t happen again!” type of statement, could he? He’s not trying to play this off as a harmless summer camp prank, is he? He couldn’t possibly be that stupid, could he? And then I remembered:
Not stupid. Just reality immune like so many other True Believers™.
Found via my Pretend Internet Girlfriend.
They’ll get a slap on the wrist. I once helped the EPA nail a Christian summer camp director who buried a half-dozen 55-gallon drums of chlordane less than 150 feet from the waterline of a lake that provides our sister city’s water. The drums were dug up, the director got a stern talking to, and the employee who drew the map for me eventually quit because they made his life a living hell. The director is still there years later.
“Oops! You aren’t supposed to bury large amounts of insecticide next to city water supplies? My bad! I sniffed the drums and they didn’t have an odor so I decided they’d become harmless with age.” (that last sentence is a quote)
Hey, it’s church camp. They’re spreading the gospel. Church camps are practically invulnerable.