Sleepaway Camp 2007
Exodus' bold attempts to target youth remind me of a horror movie I saw during my teens.
Daniel at Ex-Gay Watch reports that ex-gay leaders Alan Chambers & Scott Davis will speak next summer at the Ignite Student Outreach camp. Speaking of Alan Ignite's site boasts that,
He offers unique insight into how homosexuality personally affects individuals and the broader culture. Alan will share advice and training with youth workers at camp to teach them how to address this epidemic issue.Going to bed with that story on my mind, I woke up repeatedly. By morning I remembered the details of Sleepaway Camp, the scariest and most shocking movie I had ever seen, particularly as a young queer kid. Plot summary of the 1983 film Sleepaway Camp:
After a horrible boating accident kills her family, Angela, a shy and sullen young girl, moves in with her eccentric aunt Martha, alongside her protective cousin Ricky. One summer, Martha sends the kids to Camp Arawak. Soon after their arrival, a series of bizarre and increasingly violent accidents begins to claim the lives of various campers. Who is the twisted individual behind these murders? The disclosure of the murderer's identity is the most shocking climax in the history of American cinema.
Turns out, Angela is the crazed killer. But here's the twist, Angela is really a boy, Peter, raised as a girl by her dysfunctional aunt. But that is only half of the equation that turns Peter/Angela into a blood-thristy transgender lunatic. Through a series of flashbacks, we discover what really destroyed Peter/Angela as a child. S/he walked in on her father and his lover having gay sex!Yes, over the top, but really isn't it the same horror movie scenario many of us pick up about ourselves hearing the stuff our opponents have to say about queer folks. They claim we come from dysfunctional families who made us sexual deviants. Left unchecked, we will live out life as sociopaths.
Young people hear the messages BEHIND the message. A minister or ex-gay leader says that that 'the gay lifestyle" and gay people are sinful, unpleasing to God, sick, an epidemic that needs to be addressed. But many youth hear the subtext, You are flawed and unwanted. You will rot in hell. You sickos disgust me.
So Ignite Student Outreach seeks to save and sort out youth. Yet they prey on the fears of parents who think that a queer child is one of life's worst fates. They undermine the well-being of young people by deomonizing GLBT people. They foment internal conflict and violence. They turn people against themselves and each other. In short, they write yet another horror movie script with the ultimate big bad being transgender, lesbian, bisexual and gay humans.
See for yourself Sleepaway Camp's Shocking Surprise Ending:
And coming to a Christian summer camp near you---Sleepway Camp 2007!
posted by Peterson Toscano @ 12:38 PM
10 Comments:
Darn! Now you've gone and wrecked the ending. I'll have to remove it from our Netflix queue.
WOAH. What a twisted movie. See, it's films like that that give REAL Trans. people a bad name--it makes the public further believe that we were ALL raised by crazy people, like poor Peter/Angela's aunt.
Creeeeeepeeeee. But not anywhere as creepy as Alan Chambers speaking. ::shudder::
Teehee. I didn't mean to make it sound, in my previous comment, like Peter/Angela's aunt was the one I was feeling sorry for--it's Peter/Angela I was talking about feeling bad for.
Ok. I'm done. Just had to clear that up--it was bugging me.
Scary indeed!
When I told my mother I was bisexual (before I realizxd I was actually gay) her first respons was "All gay people had an horrible childhood, did you?" Of course I had to say yes .. I mean, she basically put the words in my mouth right? :D
Until recently we have always been portrayed as the deranged killer. Look at Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and the movie “Dressed to Kill”
Important FYI.... Ignite Student Outreach has edited its website section on "Affiliates."
Ignite Student Outreach re-writes the past
Thanks Matt for the update.
joe g., you said it. I remember in 1983 when I saw the film for the first time, everyone in the theater GASPED. Not only because Angela turned out to be a boy (no one saw that coming) but that they actually showed a penis on screen. Of course it was probably a fake one, but still!
that ending of the movie clip completely freaked me out! And not because he was a guy or there was a rolling head. The expression with that breathing! *hides!!*
And, being so young in the LGBT world, I haven't really felt the blow of really being thought perverted and wrong. Of course, I'm a lesbian and not trans, but still... wow. Hugs for anyone who feels like people see them as that!!
*hugs*
And thanks for the post, Peter. You're right, alot of kids DO get that message from anti-gay ramblings.
Angela wasn't destroyed by seeing her father and his lover in bed together. That flashback was to demonstrate Angela's sexual confusion. Sleepaway Camp was at no time anti-gay.
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