Residents of an Idaho resort town came out in opposition of a plan to set up a summer camp for children with cancer. Camp Rainbow Gold has previously invited childhood cancer patients to its privately owned campground in the Sawtooth Mountains, but organizers announced last month they were trying to buy property in the unincorporated town of Triumph to serve as a permanent location and allow more kids to take part, reported the Idaho Mountain Express. But residents of the nearby resort town of Ketchum packed a community meeting last week to voice their opposition to the plan.
“We don’t want none of that here,” could be heard during the meeting. Apparently, the residents’ resistance is attributed to misinformation, as they almost unanimously argued that the organizers would have to buy land elsewhere because “we don’t want any of those sinners close to our kids and ourselves.” At several points, the meeting threatened to grow into an all-out, mass fistfight between the residents and the camp organizers, but luckily, that did not happen.
“We know what they’re thinking,” one of the residents, who requested anonymity, told the Idaho Mountain Express. “They think we’re a bunch of retarded, small-minded hillbillies who are so simple that they only care about money. But they’ve got another thing coming. We have no desire whatsoever to negotiate on the issue. And while we honestly sympathize with those kids and the ordeal they’re going through, at the same time we don’t want our kids to come into contact with that sort of thing. Better safe than sorry.”
After yet another one of the organizers’ unsuccessful attempt to explain to the townsfolk that cancer patients don’t willingly choose to have cancer and that God doesn’t use cancer as a punishment for committing sins, the town residents argued that “God isn’t stupid” and that he wouldn’t create something so dreadful and challenging if he didn’t intend it as a form of punishment from the start. “We may not know much about making a lot of money and using those big, fancy words while talking, but we do know how God works. And we’re not having any of his sinners around here,” they countered.
“We’re starting to get desperate,” one of the camp organizers told the Idaho Mountain Express reporter. “They’ve got it in their heads that those poor kids are somehow guilty of something, of some biblical crime or sin or whatever. And now they’re costing us a pristine piece of land at a very good price. I dare say this could have been a steal, figuratively speaking. If we’re forced to look elsewhere for our new campsite, we’ll waste more time not helping those kids. It’s incredible that those people still exist in the 21st century, honestly.”
“Look, we get how they feel,” the resident pitched back into the conversation. We get what you’re trying to do, and it’s very noble. We think y’all are doing a fine job, we really do. But, you know, at the end of the day, it’s our land and, like we said, we don’t want this sort of temptation in our midst. I mean, we’re having enough problems as it is with inbreeding and incest to be worrying about another issue. I mean, imagine trying to figure out which one of your 7 sons impregnated your 4th daughter, and then having a big-shot businessman asking you to sell him land for a cancer kids camp. We’ve got big problems here and we don’t need any new ones,” the unofficial spokesperson for the townspeople concluded.
