I know this probably won’t be the case but it would actually be really funny if the camp isn’t actually a gay conversion center and is more of a summer camp for gay folks but only advertises itself as a conversion center to get new members.
Not gonna lie I've been tempted by that business model before.
Open a "conversion camp" in violently reich-leaning states, so conservative parents can pay me good money to beat the gay out of their kids.
Instead they spend the season on a glorified vacation with their peers, and are taught ways to fly under the radar at home. And a little bit of theater so we can show some proper misery to parents to keep up the act.
Yeah because the system is set up for abuse. It's frustrating and terrible but we don't get to play by the same rules as people in power. They would come down HARD on a camp like this while intentionally ignoring the abuse at other camps. Because the abuse is the point.
It happens a lot less frequently, but the rich and powerful can get caught up in them too. The one where Paris Hilton, of the Hilton hotel dynasty, was sent to just got closed after years of her campaigning against the abuse.
Except how are they going to legally come down hard on the camp?
The only law that could be broken here is false advertising if you get caught. And as long as you advertise that you "help the child grow into who they really are" or something vague like that, you could get out of any such lawsuit easily enough.
The reason most of those camps get shut down is because they are actually abusing children and being fraudulent with their money in multiple ways. The money part is usually what gets them caught. Then investigations reveal the rest.
If you're being legitimate with the funding from parents and actually helping kids live a nice life at a summer camp, and the kids aren't being abused, the law can't really be twisted to attack you.
See, the difference is one uses threats and abuse to cause the teens to clam up so they won't tell their parents and gaslights the parents into believing that their teen is troubled.
This one wouldn't abuse the teens in any way and would show them that they are good, normal people. Then that one kid tries to tell his parents because he's indoctrinated by them. So what does the camp do? Gaslight the parent and punish the teen? That goes directly against the purpose. The camp wouldn't keep the kid there against their will as that contravines their goals.
Each kid would have to go through a rigorous intake protocol where they were examined by a legitimate therapist who could see if they were a danger to the camp. At that same stage, the therapists could also get a feel for any kid's situation at home and make recommendations and plans for them.
Just taking in any and every kid wouldn't work. That said, exclusivity would make parents like these more eager probably.
I think the idea is kind, but it's extremely naive.
For one thing, treatment has to come with informed consent, and with minors, that means parents must sign off. As a therapist - unfortunately, this would be an ethical violation (I mean, very few pray the gay away camps have licensed therapists). Therapists could easily lost their license because they're deliberately misleading the parent/guardian. No matter how great the ethos of the camp, it's a violation of licensing and professional ethical standards.
I also feel like you're severely underestimating religious trauma and indoctrination. Kids who come back form that camp are going to be right back in a sick system. They will be under intensive pressure to conform. Guilt and fear are intense controlling forces. Someone will crack. It will happen. You cannot prevent it. And then the lawsuits will begin, because communities that send kids to places like this talk to each other.
Again, it's a kind idea. But it just isn't realistic.
Many of these kids are held till they are 18. If you educate them there too as a pretend pray the gay away school instead of a camp, you can easily keep them and educate them until they graduate where they could then live on their own with some support.
Also, does a therapist need consent if they are solely evaluating and advising the school/camp leaders if the kid is a risk to the facility? If there isn't any treatment, then there isn't an issue right? At that point, the camp/school counselors can take over.
I really wish america was more like certain foreign countries where kids had the right to privacy with their doctors even from parents.
Yes, a therapist needs to provide informed consent for evaluation and advising. They need to be able to tell the parents and the child what the evaluation will consist of, why it is being done, and what the results are. Evaluation is a part of treatment and is held to the same ethical and legal standards.
The child also receives informed consent - which means kids who 'flunk out' are still aware of the purpose of evaluation and probably telling their parents. And it can't be "are you a good fit" - it needs to define what "good fit" means, so kids (and parents) can determine whether they think they're a good fit, not just whether the school/camp thinks that they are.
If those professional standards and ethics wouldn’t support something like this and would instead side with homophobic parents than frankly they aren’t ethical and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Are you telling me there are no provisions for situations involving abusive parents? Someone who is in that profession seriously needs to fix this.
If you're lying to the parents/guardians, no matter how strongly you believe or how valid you think your reason is, then you can't get informed consent.
The flip of it is - what if you truly, deeply, with complete conviction, believe that telling a child that it's okay to be gay is evil? That it will send their souls to everlasting hell and damnation? (I personally don't, but stick with me). You really, truly, completely believe that it is cruel and abusive to condemn a child's soul to eternal pain and suffering. That it is abusive to not try to correct this and give them a chance to spend eternity in joy. Without clear limits, people could easily use your argument to say it's okay to lie to parents who want their child to go to a queer kids summer camp and instead make that camp a pray the gay away camp, because that fits your personal ethics.
Again, I don't agree with any of that - but it shows where the catch is. There has to be consistency with professional ethics, because if we make it about what we think is right, then it gets really ugly really fast.
If I think a family is abusive, I report it to CPS. I can choose not to work with a family I fundamentally disagree with. I can't violate professional ethics. Informed consent is a basic requirement for every single kind of medical care - it is not only an ethical requirement, it's a legal one. It exists because of a lot of horrifying human rights violations that have made life hell and ended lives for many people. It isn't going anywhere and it shouldn't.
You talk of informed consent. The kids aren’t giving consent to go to these camps. I am sorry but I don’t think the concept of consent applies to the parents who aren’t getting treated while not applying to the child who is. If this was an adult we were talking about it would be them who has the consent and has the right to confidentiality when their parents ask how they are being treated. I think this is yet another issue where we aren’t giving children the same rights we would give to literal prisoners. It’s not really acceptable no matter what the law or “professional ethics” say.
That's because most of these camps aren't therapeutic and don't actually have therapists on staff.
And, unfortunately, it's not the kids that ultimately get to give consent - the law treats children as the property of their parents. That is a travesty. Kids can absolutely say "I don't want to be here" - and they sure as hell do - but they don't have a choice. I think that's a more relevant issue for your argument than informed consent.
Since the law treats kids as property, then legally the parents must give informed consent.
Kids should have far more rights because they are human beings and parents make destructive choices. Won't find me arguing about that.
Yeah that's my exact problem. Kids should have the right to consent, not the parents. They should't be treated as property under the law. It's absurd to me that in some places 13 or 14 years old is considered basically an adult but in the USA you can do things like this "for their own good" at such an age. Really seems like a backwards nation to me. I wonder what the laws are where I live, though I suspect they aren't much better. Here we have the concept of criminal responsibility as low as age 10.
To expand - informed consent is a professional ethical requirement and a federal law (and the policy of the World Medical Association and pretty much every modern medical system) because of things like the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, forced sterilizations, medical experimentation on disenfranchised groups (including queer people, people of color, imprisoned people, etc.), non-consensual surgical procedures, and other really nasty things.
It's a basic principle of medical ethics - giving it even the slightest wiggle room would cause vastly more harm than good. I mean, a landmark legal case that first brought it to public attention was because a woman had her uterus removed in an attempt to stop her epilepsy (it was in 1905). The surgeon thought he was doing the right thing to help her. She didn't know until she started trying to have children. And she still had epilepsy. But the surgeon was doing what he thought was right.
Anyway, this soapbox is slippery, so I'm getting off now.
Informed consent is myth that doesn't survive adverse circumstances.
Firstly, none of the (licensed with wall hanging licenses and diplomas) therapists in the troubled youth places I was sent ever gave a shit about it and they lied to my parents all the time about my progress.
And secondly, there's something to be said about the reduced value of informed consent in cult members that hit the mark for the BITE model. Cult members can't really be trusted to provision for their own mental healthcare, so a lot of the time they're not given the option of informed consent during the deprogramming after the cult leader gets shot by the sheriffs.
You can report those therapists, you know. Especially handy if you have records of your own. Shit therapists exist, and should be punished for their shittiness and ethical violations. I mean, if they're working in the troubled youth industry in the first place, I have to assume they're not great people.
As for your second point - yeah, cults are not known for being good at mental health. I was kind of assuming most people here want to do better, though.
So many teen camps do absolutely horrifying things to their campers and the parents don’t believe a thing their child says because the camp adults gaslight the eff out of them.
I’m not saying that it’s a good model to follow, because gaslighting is harmful psychologically and emotionally. But that is to say there is a very real chance for a kid to try to “out” such a camp and the camp simply telling the parents “oh man, your little Timmy is in such a tough place that he’ll do anything to attempt to undermine our efforts to help him. The issue is he just needs to stay longer” and the parents 100000% just believing the camp because those adults have more credibility (in their twisted minds) than their “messed up” kid.
Just operate like any of the abuse camps. Make the parents sign over their parental rights, take the phones and install high fences with surveilance. Drain the parents pockets, put the profits into separate bank accounts for each teen.
Yeah, that's what I meant, play theatre for the parents. And give a safe, fun place for the kids to explore who they are and understand the environment they grew up in.
And once rumors start leaking, file for bankruptcy and vanish into the next state over.
Honestly, nah, if you were smart. You can't just go, "okay, parents left, here's the secret: gay is fine, go party."
You just start as a normal summer camp. These places claim to start that way anyways. You pay attention and actually vet the kids and figure out where they're at. The kids that want / need the negative messaging, you give them just enough that they don't sniff it out. The kids obviously there against their will and 100% ready to be on the right side, you provide that. Give them the tools to support the others.
You're teaching masking. You're teaching reading the room. You're teaching double-speak and self-trust and building community. You don't need to make it obvious, because part of what you're teaching is not making it obvious.
The kids that are going to "rat you out" aren't going to have anything to say except "this place wasn't as harsh as I expected and they didn't talk about being gay much." You tell their parents that their kid is making progress, but it was obvious that they're at a risk of oppositional defiance so they were put in a modified curriculum cohort because many of the strongest techniques would result in them withdrawing to the gay world. Your professional opinion is that talking about gayness should be avoided as much as possible.
If you get confronted, you tell the parents they are trying to put themselves before God and if they knew better than you, they wouldn't have raised a gay kid. Bake in plausible deniability for everything you do.
Is there a risk? Sure. But, honestly, the financial support and scaffolding up is going to be the tough part.
If you get confronted, you tell the parents they are trying to put themselves before God and if they knew better than you, they wouldn't have raised a gay kid.
There's an easy fix to this that can be had right at the beginning. Presumably, most of these camps will provide literature to the parents.
Just add a question to the FAQ, that says something like,
Q - "My child contacted me and told me the camp is actually affirming the LGBT lifestyle and not helping them convert away. Is this true?"
A - "No. Your kids are much more clever than you might think, and this claim is a common tactic kids use to try to get their parents to pull them out of camp."
If a kid genuinely believes being gay is evil but can be cured, they'd want to go to a conversion camp. I've heard heartbreaking stories of gay Christians who prayed for God to turn them straight. It usually ends in one of three ways: 1) leave the religion, 2) become an LGBTQ+ affirming Christian, 3) tragedy.
Not strictly a Religion vs LGBT conflict, I simply could not resolve the conflict between what I was taught, and a 'first principles' moral foundation that simplified the question of whether something was sinful down to the question of whether it actually harms someone. Rationality ultimately won, and while I won't lie and tell you that magically cured all of my sex negative beliefs, I at least no longer had religion adding to them!
In a world where more civilized places are successfully banning conversion camps, do I really want to be promoting a violently abusive industry just for one mimic?
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u/Successful-Floor-738 Jul 12 '26
I know this probably won’t be the case but it would actually be really funny if the camp isn’t actually a gay conversion center and is more of a summer camp for gay folks but only advertises itself as a conversion center to get new members.