I misspoke.

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For the past three weeks I've been at a summer camp for working on the musical "Once on This Island." Anyway, yesterday was the day of the last performance. I got into a discussion with some other kids in the camp about gay rights. The other kids were arguing that homosexuality is disgusting because the Bible argues against it. I am not gay, but I think homosexuals should have the same rights to marry as people who are heterosexual. I am Jewish, and familiar with the passage in Leviticus which argues against homosexuality.
However, as I told the other kids, homosexuality is mentioned only once or twice in all of the Torah, or for most people, the Old Testament. Important things, such as the reminder "I am your God," are written once every other sentence, while unimportant things are said only once or twice in the entire book.
They argued that since it was there at all, that meant it was important. I was going to point out that there are a lot of rules in the Bible that aren't followed anyway. I tried to use as my example that most Christians don't keep kosher.
However, I accidentally started my sentence with the phrase "You Christians." I didn't mean to insult anyone. I didn't mean that Christianity is a bad religion or any thing like that. I just wanted to point out that maybe not everything written was an absolute law. Instead of letting me finish my sentence, everyone got offended. One girl exclaimed that I was getting too poisonous. Everybody started to go away. I tried to explain, but they wouldn't listen. I started getting so upset that they wouldn't let me explain that I started to scream.
Later, I apologized to them and tried to explain. They said that they were still offended. They didn't seem offended. They all seemed perfectly happy and were talking and laughing with each other.
Later still, I offered them some cookies that I had gotten as a gift earlier that day. Only a few of them took one, and I still felt bad.
I was able to complete the last performance of our play, but afterwards I still felt so depressed that I couldn't go to the cast party. I went home, watched some TV, then went to bed.
I didn't mean to insult anyone or their religion. I really didn't.

They are not very good Christians, are they?
A lot of "pretending" as I can read from post but not real sincerity or understanding of what they're taught.

Cheer up RedTatsu, don't get that upset about people who don't even know the basic rules.
You were courageous enough to do the show and not let them down.
So now, the important thing, the real one, are the 3 good weeks you had before that evening (from my point of view).

As a Christian and as a parent, the first question that came to my mind was, why did you bring up gay rights to a bunch of children at a summer camp? What was your purpose or goal?

I had to look up the play, to see if the subject matter had any relevance, but there didn't seem to be a connection.

At this camp, where everyone was working on a musical, did you usually have extracurricular discussions about volatile topics? As a leader during these sorts of events - especially when working with children - you have to tread very carefully and weigh the motivations for your actions.

Was this an appropriate topic to bring up? What outcome were you hoping for? Were you trying to change peoples minds or promote dialogue? Were you mentally prepared to referee a debate?

Am I missing a big part of the picture? It just seems like bringing it up at all was totally out of place, and, to me, perhaps that's where the offensiveness of it came in.

It's one thing if everyone is at this event specifically to have these sorts of talks, but if you just brought it up out of the blue and then, once you saw it was upsetting, you continued by telling them what was wrong with their belief system - of course people are going to feel attacked and insulted.

The "you Christians" thing may have came out wrong, but the point was valid.. Christians DO disregard much of the Old Testament, like the dietary restrictions. They may simply not have wanted to admit that you had a good point, so acting offended by what you said took the heat off of them.


She didn't say with the kids-- she said with the other kids. Her age isn't listed here, but her profile links to her art page, where it is listed. Groups of 14-year-olds do tend to talk about stuff like that, I think it's unfair to say that a group of teens shouldn't be discussing gay rights, it's a very common political topic.

Very true! My bad - I assumed she was a leader. And if she had been an adult working at this camp, it would have been inappropriate.

But you're right, children do talk about these things amongst themselves.

*whispers* And just for the record, we don't disregard the Old Testament. The death of Jesus put an end to our need for animal sacrifice, dietary restrictions, etc. The New Testament goes into great detail about this.

Christian, Jewish, Catholic, etc. nobody ever seems to remember "Judge not, lest ye be judged"

*whispers back* what about homosexuality, then? Is it mentioned in the New Testament? (for some reason I'm drawing a blank on that..) Jews don't do the animal sacrifice thing anymore, either.. Maybe we should take this part of the discussion over the the religion and philosophy section..


I think that may also depend on the camp, and the age of the kids, and who brought it up.. Usually camp counselors aren't that much older than the kids anyways.
My camp experience is all from Girl Scout camp, I'm sure if it were like a Christian camp it would be different..
What's inappropriate for a middle-aged teacher to talk about to a group of elementary school students isn't necessarily inappropriate for the 18-year-old who just became a counselor to talk about to her group of teenage girls.. (Of course, remember that my experience is from Girl Scout camp, so things were simpler than if it were a mixed camp.)

[ I hope this post didn't come out horribly offensive.. ]

er, Catholics are Christian, and the "Judge not" bit is in the New Testament.. so it doesn't apply to Jews.

I have a gay brother who has been in a relationship for over 8 years. Jesus never said a word about homosexuality and he is the authority, I believe. The rest of the Bible may or may not be true. This is my viewpoint.

However, I brought this up one time at work and got attacked by everyone. They told me homosexuality was an "abomination to the Lord." I said, "If God is love, how can his children be an abomination to him?" They were just on-fire with their bigoted hatred against gays and it made me absolutely sick.

But, you know, my BF told me later I didn't have to have brought it up at all. It was a hard lesson.

Yes, but we all do judge. Let's be honest.

What tempers my judgements is that I believe (and the NT speaks of this) that I will be judged by the same standard I use, and I will be forgiven based on my willingness to extend forgiveness to others. I get over myself really fast, because that's how I want to be accepted and loved.

In the situation above, both sides were making a call on what they believed to be right or wrong. The ideal, IMHO, would be that we are able to listen and respect the opinion of another, yet walk away friends. Unfortunately, it usually doesn't work out that way.

I think we just can have a tendency to face issues head on, it is not that we mean to be "inappropriate" or offend others. I think NTs, even young NTs, can be less direct with all this stuff. What also made the situation hard is also that you were the only non-christian there, and the only person with relatively liberal views. I think that with the years you will get more adept with handling those sorts of situations. Hang in there.

They seem to have been a bunch of immature young people, it's not your fault that you have a more open view to things, the only problem was the you christians thing and if they were really following their religion they would have just said that it hurt them that you said it and then moved on (forgive and forgetting it). Any half mature person would know that you didn't mean to hurt anyone.

I probably would have responded to negitive speaking about gay relationships the same way but I was raised catholic. So I probably would have been able to go new testament on them and their 'arguments'. The two big things would be (as regards new testament, in my opinion) 'love one another as I have loved you' and 'judge not lest you be judged'. They're two quotes that can cause people to go quiet sometimes and start a whole other conversation for some reason.

Not at all! Respectful discussions aren't offensive. But we have kind of highjacked the original posters thread.



Yes, homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament - Romans 1:27-31.



Yes, it does depend on the camp - I mentioned that in my first post. But, as a parent, if I had sent my child to this event to learn a musical, and one of the leaders decided arbitrarily that he would have a talk with the children about gay rights because that was a passion of his and he felt compelled to share, I personally would find that inappropriate. I would find it equally unsuitable for a leader to share his political views, or religious views, or any other provocative topic. The camp isn't about him and to have a personal agenda other than teaching my child about this play is unacceptable.

Now, having said that, I would take context into consideration. If one of the other camp members was being ganged up for professing to be gay, or if the one of leaders was gay and then questioned by the children about his views, then I would understand a need to talk openly.

My concern is that lack of tolerance is a problem for both sides. In a perfect world, everyone would be willing to listen to the opinions of others and in the end say, 'We can agree to disagree'. But, as we all know, that's not how most conduct themselves.

I'm also half Jewish, and I've often wondered about the lack of blood atonement for Jews. I did ask a Jewish man sitting next to me on a plane once, but he couldn't answer. But I just looked it up and found an explanation: http://www.jewfaq.org/qorbanot.htm

Just to be clear, the op was going to the camp. The op is not a camp employee.

Yes, I understand.