Who can forget their first summer camp?
The buzz of anticipation among friends as the bus arrives at the campgrounds, the spooky stories around a campfire with s’mores, the corny songs and accompanying hand motions. It’s the quintessential childhood experience etched into our personal stories forever.
When the law ignores truth, kids pay the price.
For some children, summer camp can be a nerve-racking experience — leaving mom and dad for the first time, sharing a communal space with strangers, roughing it without the usual comforts of home. Part of growing up involves being pushed outside your comfort zone, but young boys and girls should never be subjected to situations that compromise their safety and dignity.
Yet, a new Colorado policy does just that, putting a controversial political agenda ahead of kids.
Camp under fire
The Colorado Department of Early Childhood recently updated its regulations for licensed resident summer camps to force camps to allow children to access bathing, dressing, and sleeping facilities of the opposite sex, meaning if a young boy says he’s a girl, camps are forced to place him with girls (and vice versa).
Camp IdRaHaJe in Bailey has served children since 1948.
A Christian summer camp, it derives its name from the classic hymn “I’d Rather Have Jesus” and exists to present the truth of the gospel to the thousands of kids who attend every summer. Camp IdRaHaJe serves children of all beliefs and all backgrounds, but each family knows that the camp houses children only according to their biological sex.
When the camp learned about Colorado’s new policy, it applied for an exemption multiple times — but it was denied each time.
With summer upon us, the camp is in an impossible situation between adhering to its religious beliefs and compromising the safety and privacy of the approximately 2,600 kids who will attend over the summer.
Truth on trial
Colorado’s position on this matter is untenable.
Each passing day reveals more and more truths about gender identity ideology, and the evidence continues to point out what we knew all along: Biological sex matters.
Medical experts around the world are taking a strong stance against rushing kids through processes that negatively alter their bodies and turn them into lifelong medical patients. Individuals who have gone through this process voice their regret and their anger that adults who should have known better are recklessly pumping them with cross-sex hormones and removing otherwise healthy body parts.
But Colorado insists on pushing this disproven, dangerous trend.
The state has laws that prevent licensed counselors from speaking with children about underlying issues that could cause gender dysphoria, a condition that is often resolved as children are allowed to develop naturally through puberty (rather, the state forces counselors to promote its extreme ideology). The state also forces kids to share intimate spaces with members of the opposite sex on overnight school trips, often without parents’ knowledge.
On top of all of this, the state refuses to respect dissenting beliefs. Camp IdRaHaJe holds the commonsense and religious belief that we are created male and female, and nothing can change who we are. Colorado’s policy allows individualized exceptions, but it turned down the camp’s requests for a religious exemption to the policy.
Lawsuit for liberty
Before this policy was enacted, Camp IdRaHaJe met all the department’s requirements to hold a resident camp license — a license the camp has held since 1995.
The department issuing the licenses annually inspects camps, and any reported violation of a regulation could shut the camp down. Since the camp cannot allow children to access spaces of the opposite sex in good conscience, it retained the services of Alliance Defending Freedom (where I serve as legal counsel) to sue the state so that it can retain its license and safe policies that respect human dignity.
Colorado cannot force a Christian summer camp to adopt its extreme policies on gender and sexuality. When the law ignores truth, kids pay the price.
Camp IdRaHaJe has every right to believe that boys are boys and girls are girls. The sooner we get back to that reality, the better our kids are for it.
The post Colorado pushes gender ideology on kids — but this Christian camp is fighting back appeared first on TheBlaze.
