Camp Segregation
Former counsellors of Camp Seggie disgusted by anti-gay hiring practice
In 2015, Sophie Betts worked as a counsellor at Camp Seggie – a camp that strictly rejects people like her working there.
“I am a queer woman,’’ says Betts, a 19-year-old student at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.
Betts was not out as being queer at the time she worked at Camp Seggie, a non-profit children’s summer camp in Rice Point where Christian faith is taught and practised.
If she had been out, she would have been out of a job.
Camp Seggie makes employees sign a Statement of Staff Standards that requires staff members during the entire term of service both on-site and off-site, including staff training week and time off, to “refrain from practices which are condemned by God in the Bible.’’
Among the forbidden practices are having an abortion and “sexual sins’’ such as homosexual behaviour.
Betts calls the contract simply awful.
“It’s really hard for me to wrap my head around,” she says, noting she feels the camp management and board is homophobic.
“I tried to ignore the contract as best I could.”
Another former camp counsellor found the contract hateful for requiring staff to essentially agree to refrain from being gay.
“I felt it was outrageous,’’ says the university student, who did not wish to be named.
“The main concept of the Gospels is to love one another. If they have that (clause on homosexuality) that is not showing love to so many people.’’
The woman, who lives in Charlottetown, hopes publicly raising concerns about the contract will lead to change at Camp Seggie.
“I’m hoping that it will almost be like a reality check for them…make them realize that what they are doing is not OK and they are really hurting people,” she says.
Camp Seggie, however, does not seem to see the need to apologize for its hiring policy or to change it in any way.
Camp Segunakadeck — Camp Seggie for short — was founded in 1963 by First Baptist Church in Charlottetown but was eventually turned over to the P.E.I. Baptist Association. Its board oversees the staff contract.
Camp Seggie executive director Bob Terpstra did not want to offer a detailed defence of the Statement of Staff Standards, noting that the hiring practices are based on the constitution.
“This is not a policy that I have invented,’’ he says.
“This is something that has been handed down.’’
Terpstra adds that Camp Seggie is not isolated in making a condition of employment a pledge to refrain from homosexual behaviour.
“There are other camps in similar situations,’’ he says.
“As far as our campers, we are very inclusive,’’ he adds.
“We have gay and transgender campers.’’
Allowing gay and transgender campers, but forbidding to hire gay and transgender staff may seem like a discrepancy to some.
Certainly not to Renee Embree, who is the director of youth and family ministries of the Canadian Baptist of Atlantic Canada, a family of 450 churches and 14 camps, including Camp Seggie.
“When you are talking about leadership, we always have different standards for leaders,’’ she says.
“For camps and churches, if it is a bona fide occupational requirement for the person being hired to follow the faith that we believe in…then there is provision to check those students they are hiring to see if they are following the same faith and our understanding of practising that faith.’’
Embree concedes the bigger question that needs to be sorted out is determining whether or not human rights take precedent over religious freedom.
“That is something that Canadian law has to sort through,’’ she says.
Brenda Picard, executive director of the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission, says weighing human rights versus religious freedom is complicated.
She says refusing to hire staff who will not sign the standards document may be evidence that the employee was not hired based on them having or being perceived to have a protected characteristic rather than based on their individual merit.
“If so, this is, on its face, discrimination,’’ she explains.
“However, protections under the Human Rights Act are not absolute and the act does have certain exceptions and defences that the employer/organization could use to try to establish that the conditions are reasonable.’’
Picard adds that since the summer camp provides services to people with different religious or non-religious backgrounds it may not qualify for the religious organization exemption under the act. But, it could try to establish that its specification or preference was based on a genuine qualification.
“The standard must be ‘reasonably necessary to accomplish the legitimate purpose’ of the organization,’’ she says.
Camp Seggie’s website boasts that children from all backgrounds are welcome to attend the camp with well over 60 per cent of the campers coming from non-church backgrounds.
However, the fact that such inclusiveness does not extend to the hiring practice earns Camp Seggie detractors.
“They clearly don’t accept people that are different from what they want people to be, and I don’t think it’s fair,’’ says a young woman who worked at the camp for five years.
“I don’t support what they are doing at all.’’