Thousands of summer camps associated with national organizations have adopted policies rooted in left-wing ideas of gender, “trans inclusion,” and Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Among these camps are those connected to the American Camp Association (ACA), an organization of 10,000 summer camp professionals.
At the ACA’s 2023 national conference, a session titled “Trans Inclusion in Overnight Programs” emphasized the “best practices for overnight camps striving to be welcoming spaces for trans and gender non-conforming campers and staff.”
Another session dwelled on racially exclusive “affinity groups.”
The organization Outward Bound USA calls itself the “leading provider of outdoor education programs that allow young people to explore their personal potential.”
Its website includes an equity statement that says “outdoor community was and is a part of the underlying structure of injustice that governs American society,” noting that it is “deeply committed to dismantling inequities and working to write a new chapter.”
Reporting from The Daily Wire:
Numerous individual camps have also embraced leftwing theories on gender and race. Colorado’s Camp Granite Lake addresses transgender identification and cabin placement in a memo that was removed from the site. “Our longstanding guideline has been to allow campers and staff to live and work in a cabin of the gender with which they most closely identify,” it reads. Their site also explains that camp staff will refer to children based off their preferred name or pronouns regardless of the wishes of the parent. “At camp, we will acknowledge the name and/or pronoun change during the session,” Camp Granite Lake says before going on to state “While parents and caregivers may choose a different approach at home, as a youth serving organization, it’s not within our scope to tell campers what they are not.”
