You’d have to be either an idiot or an amnesiac to want to relive being a teenager, which makes Camp Out predictably uncomfortable viewing with a twist—it’s a documentary about a week at America’s first gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered Christian Bible camp. Outsiders in both the church, the straight world and the GLBT community, the 10 midwestern teenagers who arrive at Bay Lake Camp are ostracized wherever they turn. By turns funny, cringe-inducing and tear-jerking, Camp Out is an effective effort to normalize the gay Christian experience, and should be required viewing for both conservative Christians and progressives who don’t understand why GLBT people even consider staying in the church.
Camp Out isn’t a theological treatise, having the hyper-pious camper Thomas set out the campers’ main fear in a video diary right before the credits: “What if the Bible’s right and we are wrong—we’re all sinners and we’re going to hell?” Directors Larry Grimaldi and Kirk Marcolina focus wisely instead focus on the strength of their footage: adolescents in an extraordinarily difficult situation enjoying one of their first chances to behave like ordinary teenagers.
Bay Lake isn’t radically different from other summer camps, Christian or otherwise—there’s the andatory awkward talent show, lame arts and crafts, bunk bed gossip and trouble with sharing the hot water supply. Almost all of the male campers develop unrequited crushes on pretty boy vocalist Jesse, who its his own first gay crush was the cartoon version of Wolverine. But the campers’ confessions about their previous experiences at Bible camps and within the church paint a harsh picture of mainstream American Christianity and its future. Bisexual Scancy’s memories of working as a counsellor at a Christian camp which wouldn’t accept her sexual orientation become increasingly painful throughout her stay at Bay Lake; before her departure, a relative asks her, “So, it’s not going o be like the other camp that hated you?” Camp Out switches gears somewhat abruptly between the teens’ earnest, articulate pre-camp interviews and their time at the camp itself, which seems to be dominated by sunshine, hysterical giggling and gossip sessions. As the documentary allows the campers to keep video diaries and film themselves, the generally frothier content ensures the film doesn’t sink under the weight of its own mission, although audio problems can make the action difficult to follow.
Some of the teens would be oddballs anywhere, including homeschooled Christine (who has an Elvis hrine in her room and refers to God as “She”) and 15-year-old Tim, a dead ringer for a young, gay Jack Osborne who “[doesn’t] have many friends now that I stopped doing drugs.” Tim’s ridiculous,
sulking attempts to attract attention and angsty poetry are the hardest parts of the film to watch, not least because of the implied misery behind them.
The campers aren’t always happy with their experiences at Bay Lake. Aspiring pastor Thomas refuses o take part in a game of Truth or Dare, saying he “really wanted to come to a place where stuff mattered, besides sex.” But even seemingly inconsequential interactions are important in context— any of the male campers it it’s the first chance they’ve had to form platonic relationships with the same sex, because they’re ostracized by other boys at home. Camp Out is as much the story of the campers as one of the camp’s founders, openly gay Lutheran pastor Jay Weisner.
Frustrated with his own experiences in the church as well as the high suicide rate among queer teens, the film’s most powerful moment doesn’t involve the kids at all, but the footage of Weisner’s ordination ceremony.
Disobeying the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s edict that gay pastors must be celibate, the amera’s long sweep over hundreds of people in Weisner’s congregation giving him a standing ovation
is a goosebump-raising moment. As heartwarming as it is to watch the campers form friendships and move towards self-acceptance, it’s almost equally heartbreaking to imagine the struggle still ahead of them back at home, especially since many of the teenagers say they hope to have large families with a same-sex life partner. While the camp’s pastors are deeply concerned about increasing numbers of young people leaving the church, the two campers who arrive questioning their relationship with Jesus leave respectively still unsure or convinced to “try other options.” Addressing his negative experiences with other Christians, Thomas, who is now in college to become a pastor, says “It gets hard, but my love for God is greater than them.” It’s not exactly shocking that other teenagers don’t always make the same decision. Camp Out is a much-needed antidote to the terrifying documentary Jesus Camp, which shows children at an extremely conservative Bible camp deeply influenced by the political rhetoric of the religious right.
But Camp Out is also a tough, not entirely reassuring criticism of the modern church, whose future seems uncertain for many reasons—not least the novelty of scenes like Weisner’s ordination.
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