June 26, 2025 03:15 PM UTC

Fake "Freedom To Discriminate" Lawsuit Fizzles

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• by: Colorado Pols

The right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom announced in May the lawsuit on behalf of Camp IdRaHaJe near Bailey over new Colorado Department of Early Childhood policy promoting gender equality, with all the fire and fervor of religious freedom endangered by the “woke” agenda to turn John into Jill some afternoon while they’re at school:

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a lawsuit Monday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on behalf of a Christian summer camp seeking to uphold its religious and commonsense beliefs about biological sex. The camp is challenging a recent Colorado Department of Early Childhood policy update that forces licensed resident camps to allow campers to use private facilities of the opposite sex.

Camp IdRaHaJe, which derives its name from the song “I’d Rather Have Jesus,” has served children in Bailey, Colorado since 1948 and has maintained a resident camp license in the state since 1995. Recently, the department that issues resident camp licenses amended its regulations, requiring children’s camps to allow campers to access bathing, dressing, and sleeping facilities designated to the opposite sex. When IdRaHaJe requested to run its camp in line with its religious beliefs, the department denied the request, forcing the camp to choose between upholding its beliefs about biological sex and risk losing its license or abandoning its beliefs and mission to minister to children.

“The government has no place telling religious summer camps that it’s ‘lights out’ for upholding their religious beliefs about human sexuality,” said ADF Legal Counsel Andrea Dill. “Camp IdRaHaJe exists to present the truth of the Gospel to children who are building character and lifelong memories. But the Colorado government is putting its dangerous agenda—that is losing popularity across the globe—ahead of its kids. We are urging the court to allow IdRaHaJe to operate as it has for over 75 years: as a Christian summer camp that accepts all campers without fear of being punished for its beliefs.”

The controversy over Camp IdRaHaJe, a portmanteauesque mashup of the phrase “I’d Rather Have Jesus,” raged for two months, with conservatives across America weighing in over this supposed encroachment on the sacred right of churches to regulate who has access to which bathroom–just like it surely says somewhere in the Bible though we haven’t been shown exactly where. The Denver Post’s conservative columnist Krista Kafer blasted the state for seemingly “learning nothing” from the bigot baker or the web design lady who was never actually asked to create a gay wedding website:

Did the powers that be learn nothing from the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission Supreme Court decision? How about Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017) or Carson v. Makin (2022)?  Each decision makes it very clear the state cannot discriminate against faith-based providers of goods and services.

Apparently, the lesson was lost on Colorado politicians and bureaucrats who are determined to force people of faith to choose between exercising their religion and serving their clients in the Colorado marketplace…

But as it turns out, as Westword’s Hannah Metzger reports, it was Camp IdRaBeFishing who didn’t understand that religious camps like their own were already exempt from the terrible hardship of respecting gender identity:

Camp IdRaHaJe dropped the lawsuit on Tuesday, June 24, after learning that the gender identity policy never applied to the camp in the first place. The camp previously made headlines for claiming that it faced imminent closure from the state for refusing to comply with the policy; its campers are separated by their biological sex at birth, rather than their gender identity.

The gender identity policy applies to camps that are places of public accommodation under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. That means places that are “principally used for religious purposes” are exempt, including Camp IdRaHaJe. State officials say they did not attempt any enforcement action against the camp, and it was never under a threat of closure, despite the lawsuit’s allegations. [Pols emphasis]

So if the state never tried to enforce a gender identity policy on Camp ICanHazCheeseburger, then what was the point of the lawsuit and associated right-wing hullaballoo? We need look no farther than the motive for Lorie Smith’s pre-emptive lawsuit against the mere threat of being asked to create a same-sex wedding website, which she was never asked to do.

It’s called advertising, folks. If Camp IdRaHaSwitch2 was having trouble filling their bunks this summer, a few rounds of culture war headlines about their supposed oppression at the hands of Colorado’s transgender lifestyle enforcement thugs most certainly did the trick.

For those of you who were genuinely concerned about an encroachment on religious freedom that Colorado law never allowed, the joke’s on you.