Huron Lake, Pa (July 16, 2015) – In a landmark ruling by the Greater Wayne County Camping Association (GWCDA), the Board of Camp Directors has ruled by a 5-4 vote that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Camp Constitution obliges all Camp Carnival Wedding Booths to allow same-sex marriages and afford same-sex unions the same rights and privileges as traditional camp marriage. Considering that nearly 92% of all Camp Carnival marriages are of the same sex, this ruling will have a resonating impact on the entire summer camp community.
Normally operated by a younger girls side bunk, the Wedding Booth has long been a staple of camp carnivals across the country for its ease of set up and operability. With just a few simple items, a wedding booth can be created in little to no time and can provide hours of fun and entertainment.
But with the Wedding Booth comes a strong degree of peer pressure to ask a member of the opposite sex to get “married” along with a damaging fear of rejection. Even though these marriages only legally last until the end of the carnival or if either party marries another individual at the carnival, as anyone who’s ever been to summer camp can attest, a two to three hour relationship in camp is equal to a six to seven month romance in the real world.
An example of the ornate rings a camper may receive upon getting married.
For as long as one can remember, campers ages 5-10 have always struggled when it was their turn at the Wedding Booth. While girls found their counterparts “yucky” or “gross” but not wanting to miss out on a beautifully hand-crafted pipe cleaner ring, they were forced to marry another girl. This same-sex marriage brought about many stares and comments such as “that’s not a real marriage!” from the older campers and counselors.
Even more daunting was the plight of the young male campers who characterized the girls as “annoying”, “too talky”, or “stupid”. Additionally, the thought of holding a girl’s “cootie-filled” hand with their own drenched-in-sweat palm was enough to skip the booth all together. The idea of marrying another boy just for the ring and risk being called a bevy of not politically correct slurs was too much pressure for any pre-teen to handle.
But now, under the new camp law, a pair of nine year-old girls who are not ready to have boyfriends or a duo of seven year-old asexual boys can still share the same rights and freedoms for the duration of the camp carnival as the hormone-crazed 14 year-old heterosexual girl and boy who are beginning to explore their newfound sexuality.
Sydney Goldfine, an eight year-old soph girl who is enjoying her first summer at Camp Huron Lake, feels as many other young girls and boys do about the historic ruling. “I just really wanted the pipe cleaner ring.”
Genius!
Thanks Rosee!