Gay campground announces they will ban trans men so they can manage the ‘atmosphere’
MAGGIE BASKA
PINK NEWS
(Envato Elements)
A campground and RV park in Michigan is marketing itself to gay men as an institution banning trans men from the grounds.
Camp Boomerang RV Park and Campground has yet to open its site in Orleans, Michigan, but its co-owner Bryan Quinn announced a set of campground rules on its Facebook page. Quinn wrote: “Camp Boomerang is a private, membership-only RV park/campground that allows only ‘guys’.
“A ‘guy’, in terms of this discussion, is defined as a person with a penis, [who] presents himself as male and has a state-issued ID that says ‘male’.
“We understand this statement, unfortunately, may not make everyone happy, but feel it needs to be clarified.”
Quinn said it is “our hope” that visitors to Camp Boomerang enjoy a “comfortable, safe, non-confrontational environment going forward”. He added that being a membership-only campground “allows us the ability to build a like-minded atmosphere”. He explained: “We don’t mean for this to come off as a ‘like it or leave it’ attitude, but we feel it’s necessary for everyone to know exactly what our vision is for Camp Boomerang.”
Unfortunately for Quinn, that’s exactly how it came off.
The backlash to the statement was swift online. One person posted the campground’s anti-trans policy on Twitter. He called on “gays in the Michigan and Midwest area” to not visit Camp Boomerang.
Another person wrote on Twitter that any gay men in Michigan that support Camp Boomerang can “kindly f**k right off”.
The campground promised it won’t conduct “penis checks” for visitors
One person shared Camp Boomerang’s policy update on Facebook saying it wanted to be “super transphobic“. The poster added, as a gay-owned business, Camp Boomerang should “know better than to exclude the people that fought for our rights to begin with”.
“Without the trans community, we wouldn’t have any of the rights that we have now,” they added. “Trans men are men. Trans women are women. No debate. No discussion.”
In one of the screenshots shared on the Facebook post, a member of the campground’s page asked if “penis checks will be conducted prior to entry” to the park grounds.
Quinn responded: “We never said anything about ‘penis checks’, but let’s be real here.
“If we let women that act like men in, and they go naked at the poo, that’s when it’s obvious that there’s not a penis.
“Sorry to put it bluntly, but if you don’t like the rules, quietly leave.”
In the days since the announcement, Camp Boomerang – which hasn’t even opened yet – has received a slew of one-star reviews on Google. One person wrote in the reviews that they left the poor rating because of the campground’s “discrimination and transphobia”.