My church camp experience contained two oddities. The first was square dancing. At a Baptist Church camp. If you know anything about the Baptist denomination, dancing is a big no-no.
The second thing is especially odd to me as I look back on it as an adult gay man. Every week ended with a "Miss. Camp Cherokee (or Camp York) pageant. What you are thinking right now is surprisingly true. A drag show. At a Baptist Church camp. This was nothing like "RuPaul's Drag Race", however. It was balloons for brests and bad makeup and wigs. And no, you can rest assured I did not participate. The girls cabins picked the participants and they always chose the burly guys. The guys that were secure in their masculinity. I think the girls instinctively knew not to select a closet case like me.
Homosexuality was never really openly discussed but there was one time that all the boys and men gathered around a campfire and we were told it was ok to tell another man you love him, as long as you didn't mean it "that way". I, of course, had no problem with this concept but I could tell it made my male friends uncomfortable.
Then there was the time in every church camp where they put on the sad music and got you feeling really low and bad about yourself until you couldn't resist going up to the preacher who prayed with you and you accepted Jesus as your savior. As always this ended in jubilation and one year I felt so good that I hugged a younger boy. And we kept hugging. So many times that one of the female counselors asked if we knew what had just happened. As if we did something wrong. I often wonder where that other boy is now and if he had the same struggles with his sexual identity.
Looking back on it, I'm confused as to whether I attended a progressive church, that ignored church doctrine about dancing, or one that hated women to the point of mocking them. I think both can be true.
