Everyone puts away their sleeping bags into the nylon sacks which have been left underneath them, then we all form a circle round the fire.
Noah is at my left, looking up for me.
“Let us pray.” The cowboy bows his head. Everybody else, including me, brings their hands together and closes their eyes.
“Dear Lord. We ask you to watch over us all and shower us with your love through the next two weeks. We ask you to guide us through the challenges we face in our lives and to make us strong enough to face our trials. And we all say together, Our Father…”
I open my eyes and look up as we reach the end to see who recites the doxology. Everyone does, which means there are no Catholics among us. It seems that this might be a Baptist only camp, which makes me feel a little more uneasy.
Prayer is a joke when you stop to think about it. Considering my religion believes that god is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent or knows everything, can do anything and is everywhere at the same time, it makes no sense at all. If god knows everything you will do, how can you do something which will surprise him? You can’t, which means that everything is set in stone. So praying for something can make no difference to god’s will because whatever will happen is preset. So these claims when met with the claim that we have God-given free will is ludicrous.
Think of it this way. If God handed you a piece of paper which said what you would do next was hop on one foot, you could choose to do something entirely different. That would prove God is not omniscient. If it turned out you could only hop on one foot, that would disprove free will.
And if that’s too mind bending an idea, intercessory prayer is questioning god and telling him what you want him to do. It’s such an ego reinforcing delusion.
The cowboy looks up and smiles at us. “I’m Lee, the camp leader. Welcome to Summer Camp. Now, in a moment we’re all going to get breakfast but first of all I want to tell you all about these next two weeks.
“In front of me is a fire we've built to light the way to our lord. In a moment I’m going to light this fire and it will be your job to keep it ablaze. That means you’ll be learning how to chop wood like a proper cowboy and you’ll be chopping wood in groups every day.”
He looks around at us, waiting for some kind of reaction but few of the boys are looking at him.
“But before breakfast I’m going to ask you all to read a list of the rules we’ll have for the next two weeks. Then we’ll split you into your groups and you can meet your group leaders.” He motions towards the four guys who are standing next to him. “They’ve all been through this course back in the USA and will help you get through it. If you have any problems, let them know. Guys why don’t you introduce yourselves.”
They step forward one at a time.
“Hi, I’m Keith,” says the chubby red head. “I’m pleased to be here to help all of you and I’m sure we’re going to be good friends. We’re going to be your big brothers here and will be looking after you.”
“Hi there, I’m Tyson.” He’s shorter than all the rest but you can see he’s well muscled and defined, even through the track suit. “Like Keith said, we’re here to look after you and be your buddies. If you need anything or are worried about anything then all you have to do is talk to us.”
“Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Barnabus.” He’s a black guy with close cropped hair and a wide smile. “I can only agree with everyone else. We’re going to get very close over the next couple of weeks and have a lot of fun, though there’s going to be a lot of hard work as well.”
“Hi, I’m Gareth,” says the tallest of them all. He has dirty blond hair and is well built. “I want to say that I’ve been where you are and I know what you’re going through – we all do. I know it’s hard being away from home and what we’re going to be doing together isn’t an easy thing but with prayer and the grace of the Good Lord, I’ve been free from sinful thoughts since I did this course myself and I’ll do everything I can to make sure this is a success for you.”
“Well said, Gareth.” Lee claps and starts an unenthusiastic round of applause going with the inmates. Then he hands us the list of rules. It’s a third generation photocopy of a list written in Comic Sans:
1. No swearing or cursing of any kind, especially blasphemy.
2. You must ask permission for everything, including going to the toilet.
3. There is to be no physical contact of any kind between the campers.
4. No talking back or refusal of any command given to you by the staff.
5. You will speak to the leaders and other staff only when spoken to.
6. You will wake up at 6:30am and lights out will be 10pm.
7. You will not leave the grounds.
8. You will not break any of the ten commandments.
9. You will report any breach of the rules.
10. Any breach of the rules will result in you being consequenced.
“Now make sure you read all of those and understand them. You can leave them in your dorms when you settle in.”
So I’ve already broken rule three and, as I haven’t told anyone and am unlikely to, I’ve also broken rule nine. I fold the paper up and slip it in my pocket.
Lee pulls out a box of matches, strikes one and lights the fire. It must have been doused with some kind of accelerant as it goes up at once. He splits us up into four groups of three. I’m not sure if I’m happy that Noah is in my group, though by his smile I can tell that he is. Then I think about holding his hand again and I change my mind. God, this is confusing.
Our group leader is Gareth. The biggest and tallest of the four group leaders. He takes us into one of the smaller buildings which turns out to be a dorm. There are two beds in line with each other. I take the one on the right and Noah takes the one on the left. There is another bed with one side against the opposite wall, that is taken by Jacob, the other boy in our group. He seems a bit older than me, at least sixteen and wears all black gothic clothes studded and glittering with silver metalwork – clothes that my parents would never allow me to have. He has chubby cheeks which push out past his brown and straight hair that comes down over his shoulders. There is something else about him too, of all the people I’ve seen so far he looks the least concerned, like this is all something he can leave any time he wants, like none of this is going to affect him.
Once we drop our bags off in our dorm, we go to breakfast in the main building. Inside it looks a lot like our school hall. You could have a dance in here or a good game of basketball and the ceiling would be high enough to do that. There are doors at the side, six of them, and at the top right is the kitchen and serving area where a solitary old woman makes toast and places it on racks at the counter.
Breakfast is cereal, bread, toast and jam which everyone helps themselves to from a side table. Basic stuff but I was hardly expecting Eggs Benedict. I sit with Noah and Jacob and as the sound of conversation builds in the room, we get our first chance to talk.
It astonishes me to find I’m only a month older than Noah. He seems like a child and has an a continuous quiver, starts at the slightest noise and seems like he’s about to pass out or freak out at any moment. He tells us he’s from Crewe, which is why I couldn’t place his accent.
Jacob is from Romford and is almost sixteen.
Around the room the voices are subdued but the noise builds as everyone begins to relax. Still, there’s a noticeable level of volume which no one crosses.
Jacob butters a slice of toast. “So you're both gay?”
“Yes,” I say. “Though my mum and dad think it’s a phase.”
“Dunno,” says Noah. “Trying not to be.”
“Get off it!” Jacob raises his hand. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”
Noah looks around. “All right. I’m gay and I know it but I don’t think you should say that around here.”
Even now I’m trying to think the best of all this. Last night was awful, I’ll admit. The way I was brought here sca
red me more than anything. Sleeping in the open wasn’t great but at least now I knew I had a dorm. The group leaders seem friendly enough. Though when they come in and each of them sits at the table with their assigned group, the conversation among the inmates dies down.
Gareth gets a bowl of cornflakes from the side table and sits with us. At least he seems friendly and genuine. Though I’m not sure how good a thing it is that he believes Jesus has saved him, or that he might believe that somehow the same could be true for me.
“Make sure you have a big breakfast,” says Gareth, “It’s going to be a long and tiring day for all of us.”
There's a yell from one of the other tables. Lewis, the boy I’d been in the car with the night before, throws a piece of toast at his group leader, Barnabas. “I’m leaving!”
Gareth gets up from our table at once and so do all the other group leaders. All but Barnabas get to the door ahead of Lewis and dart through, ready to stop him.
Lewis is soon there, with Barnabas chasing after him, and he gets through the door. As soon as he has, Gareth shouts at him to stop.
The strangest thing is Lee, sitting right beside the door, does nothing. He carries on eating his Cornflakes as though nothing were happening. I get up and run to the door to see what’s occurring and a number of the others do as well. By the time I get there the group leaders have surrounded him.
“Where are you going?” asks Gareth. He’s standing alongside Keith and Tyson and the three of them look mean, like the worst kind of rugby back line.
“I’m going home!’ Lewis pushes Keith but it isn’t very effective.
Then, before he can do another thing, Barnabas grabs him from behind while Tyson and Gareth get a hold of his arms – they apply some pressure, levering Lewis’ arms around his back.
“Stop! Stop! You’re hurting me!” Lewis screams.
I feel my heart pumping. I want to go out there and help him. I look around at the other boys who are watching from the door and I know none of them are going to do a thing.
There is a sickening thud as Barnabas punches Lewis in his right kidney. Lewis’s legs buckle under him and the screaming stops as he falls with a slap onto the hard ground.
Keith opens the door to the wooden shed and the other three drag Lewis in and throw him to the floor. They get out fast and bolt the door from the outside. Before they turn to come back in I, and all the other inmates who came to watch, rush back to our seats to finish our breakfasts.
Gareth sits back down next to us. “I hope you saw that. There’s no going home or getting out of this. So don’t even think about it.”
I take a bite of my toast and try as hard as I can to sound disinterested. “How long will he be there for?”
“Until he’s learned his lesson.”
Chapter Seven
On the 11th of May, 1960 a small team of Israeli secret service agents abducted a man from Garibaldi Street in San Fernando, Buenos Aires. After spending nine days in a safe house they took him back to Israel to stand trial for war crimes he’d committed during the Second World War. That man was Adolf Eichmann, a lieutenant colonel in the SS and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He would be one of only two people in history to be executed by the state of Israel.
Three months after the trial started, a Yale University psychologist, Stanley Milgram, had a question on his mind. He wondered if it were possible that the standard defence, I was just following orders, given by the defendants at the numerous war crimes trials at the end of WWII, was true? What would it take to make an individual harm another to the point of death? Were the people carrying out the crimes as guilty as those who’d ordered them?
To answer this he devised a psychological experiment. He recruited subjects from the local area, offering to pay $4.00 to anyone who would help him in what he said was a study of memory. All of the people selected to participate were lower class, everyday people, no one with an education – the kind of people who were on trial after the second world war for carrying out the orders of upper echelon commanders.
They were brought in a room by an experimenter with one other volunteer and were told the study would be on how punishment affects memory and learning. At that point they had to draw slips of paper to determine whether they would play the part of the learner or the teacher but what they didn’t know was that the other volunteer they were brought in with was an actor and both slips of paper said teacher.
The actor would feign that he'd got the learner slip and would be taken into a separate room, to stop visual communication, where he was hooked up to an electric shock machine. The experimenter then explained that the teacher would be reading a list of word pairs to the learner. Then he would test the learner by asking him to indicate the pairs by pushing one of a choice of four buttons. If he was incorrect, the teacher would deliver the learner an electric shock.
Then he took the teacher back into the control room and showed him through the process of the experiment. He showed him how to work the electric shock machine and instructed him that each incorrect answer would require him to deliver a shock to the learner, the voltage increasing each time by increments of 15v up to the maximum of a deadly 450v.
Then the teacher would then be given a 45v test shock so he had an idea of what the learner would be going through and then the experiment began.
Of course, what the teacher didn’t realise is that he was the subject of the experiment. The learner/actor was never given any shocks of any kind and, as the voltages increased, the actors responses to the questions were given by a set script and his reactions of shouts, yells and denials to participate any more were played back from a recording, which, from the other room, seemed real enough to the teacher. If they reached the higher levels of shock there would be no responses and no more yells so it would seem like the learner had, at the very least, been knocked unconscious.
If at any time the teacher said he didn’t want to continue, the experimenter was scripted to say the following things:
First refusal: Please continue.
Second refusal: The experiment requires that you continue.
Third refusal: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Fourth refusal: You have no other choice, you must go on.
If the teacher objected a fifth time, the experiment was halted.
Milgram explained the experiment and polled forty psychiatrists from a medical school in advance of it running. He asked them to predict how many of the teachers would give the ultimate, deadly, 450v shock. They predicted that it would take 1,000 tries of the experiment to find one person who would go the whole way. As it turned out, they were wrong.
The result was that in the first set of experiments the full 450v was delivered by 65% of the subjects. Milgram concluded:
The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
I read about this experiment a year ago but it wasn’t till today that I saw its findings at work with what the four leaders did to Lewis. It’s obvious they were given their instructions by Lee so that he could stay out of it.
The anger stays with me through the rest of breakfast. I have to stop myself from banging down my plate, throwing my fork, or stabbing Gareth in the eye with my knife. I can’t believe what they did. I have no idea how long Lewis will be left in there. I have no idea if he’s all right. No one has gone to check on him. What Barnabas did was punch him in the kidney – punched him so hard that I think it rendered him unconscious. They’ve hit me in the kidneys at school be
fore. I know how much it hurts and how long that pain lasts.
Whatever I thought the limitations of this place were have now been battered away. What are they going to do to us here? Will they do this to me if I rebel or try to run away?
Jacob and Noah are talking again but I’m not listening. I’m trying to work out if I can make another deal with myself that will last out these two weeks. Can I be a good, compliant boy? If I am will it allow this bullshit to have an affect on me? I’m beginning to think that repressing every idea I have, that disavowing what I am might already be having a negative affect on my mind.
Maybe now is the time to take a stand and to see who I am and let that take me to wherever I end up? I ask myself if I have the courage of my convictions and I know that I am found wanting. I don’t want to be hurt. What a useless wimp I am.
It is like the experiment. These group leaders have been given the opportunity to act without taking responsibility for it. Is that how this works? They get to do whatever they want so Lee could deny he ordered it? That’s how it seems to be.
And how is this Christian? How is this Love? Is it so terrible to be gay that we must be punished like this? Because if I’ve ever seen evil before then I saw it in what they did to Lewis.
It makes me think about one of the first things I ever read that was written by a sceptic:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer Page 7
