In the week since a gay teenager was fired from his gig as a counselor for a Christian organization’s summer camp, parents have started pulling their kids from the camp in question.
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18-year-old Jace Taylor was fired on June 11, days before he was due to start working the summer-long job at Fircreek, one of the camps operated by the Firs Bible and Missionary Conference, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.
The firing made headlines after Taylor’s father posted about it on Facebook, and on June 13, The Firs Executive Director Tom Beaumont confirmed the teen had been fired because of his sexual orientation, according to The Bellingham Herald.
“In this case, in order to be consistent to our Mission and Doctrinal Statement, we unfortunately had to withdraw our invitation to this young man, who we truly like, for this summer staff role” Beaumont later wrote on Facebook.
Mike Soltis, a former Firs camper and counselor who met his wife at the organization’s Firwood camp, is one of the parents who pulled their children from the camp after learning of Taylor’s firing. This summer would have been the fourth year that Soltis’s daughter attended the camp.
“When we saw the post, we just thought, ‘Wow, we can’t support this through our money or through any affiliation until they deal with this,’” he tells the Herald. “The hate has come at a cost to that young man. It’s time for us to start using our voices and picking up signs. We can’t just quietly love and support, we have to advocate for and use our pocketbooks to send messages. In times like this, change is built on the backs of people and it can be painful.”
Related: A group of Pentecostal Christians showed up at Pride to apologize for their homophobia
Amid the controversy, former campers and counselors have come forward with their own stories, like a non-binary 18-year-old named Jaxx Bosteter who believes they were fired from being a Firs counselor on account of their sexuality and gender identity.
A 13-year-old named Sarah Somawang, meanwhile, says she was told homosexuality was wrong at a Firs camp last summer, shortly after coming out to her family and friends. “I did believe that God loved and accepted me for me until she said that,” Somawang says. “When she said that God doesn’t like gay people, I wanted to cry. I felt embarrassed, ashamed and upset.”
Denise Diskin, the executive director of QLaw Foundation and of counsel with the firm Teller and Associates, tells the Herald that under Washington state law, as it is written now, a religious nonprofit can legally deny employment to someone on the basis of sexual orientation.
Brian
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
I don’t personally believe that gayness is a sin, but I bring up the quotation just for illustration. You can bet that the managers (the adults) working at this camp have lied, stolen, punched, maybe even raped. Their insistence on values is theater. There’s no way I’ll believe they’re being internally consistent. Who do they think they’re kidding?
montegutdude
Being anti-gay is becoming the sole mission of some faiths. They’re obsessed with the subject. It’s crazy.
Especially if you consider that during the Old Testament there was no concept of a gay person. The word homosexuality didn’t exist in any Bible prior to 1946. And when Leviticus itself was written, it was thought that all the essence of life resided within a man and a woman was just a vessel to incubate his seed. The ‘sin,’ then, was never gay sex at all; it was spilling (or wasting) the essence. So that means anyone who has ever used a condom or taken birth control is equally complicit.
It’s just sad that these instiutions with the potential to do so much good are so focused on division and ostracization. All while the hypocrisy is obscene. I wish all faiths could find their way back to a message of love. The world needs it. And there’s apparently a lot of sheep that need to hear more about it.
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
— Romans 13:8-10
dwes09
That was only part of it. A large part of Jewish law (and remember, the “old testament” is Jewish sctipture, and all of Jesus’ original followers were practicing Jews, the notion that he was founding a totally unrelated religion came long after his death) is about culturally separating from idolaters and polytheists. At the time there were both male and female temple prostitutes who had sex as part of fertility rituals and phallic cults. These existed at the origin of Judaism, and in Greco-Roman times.
Mack
While some parents will pull their kids out because of this, I’m sure the right wing bigots will find some kids within their churches to fill the holes. There is plenty of bigotry to go around. They “cherry pick” the parts of the Bible that suits their hatred and for that I have absolutely no respect for religion.
Evji108
Christians are isolating themselves from the rest of society by holding on to their antiquated misinterpretation of Biblical passages. This is their loss as they fold themselves into the remains their religion which is increasingly not focused on good Christian values and building character, but instead dedicated to being anti-gay purists. There are other camps available for the families who pulled out, but the Christians are stuck with a decaying religion.
JJinAus
Religious gay people make me ill.
Cam
The right wing is making sure that the word “Christian” is becoming to be seen as just meaning “Anti-LGBT.
Narrowing the focus of the Evangelical, Mormon, and Catholic churches is just going to speed up their shrinking in both numbers and relevance.