And Now, a Word From Cyril Blubberpuss, Esq: Athletics edition

     Dear St. Charles Borromeo Seminary:
     I have read with great relief and strictly manly shedding of tears of your program that starts tomorrow and lasting through the 26th and seeks to purge hale, all-American heterosexual young men of the bane of same sex attraction through your sporting camp. Because if manly virility cannot be vouchsafed by celibate, androgynous men wearing robes, funny shoes and hats, then to whom will the task fall?
     In fact, speaking of banes, I was saying to Mitt Romney the other day as I'd just shoved my freshly-shined size 10 wingtip into the bootblack's face that I greatly admired his Olympics held at the family compound of Lake Winnipesaukee every July 4th holiday. Rather than mere athletics, the Mittster offers the family spirited semi-athletic games designed to let him win every time in order to foster the spirit of competitiveness. Indeed, with the troublesome possible exception of grandchild Twig, not a single homosexual in the 497 members of the last three generations of Romneys has ever emerged and, I think, its close relation to actual athletics has everything to do with it.
     And the idea of putting young, virile men in close quarters, with no women being allowed near to distract them from their natural inclinations, is a stroke of genius. After all, when you place sweaty, half-naked men in constant close proximity to each other, encouraging them to manfully grasp, tackle and otherwise touch each other and have them share in the male bonding ritual of showering together, it will necessarily thrust, thrust and keep vigorously thrusting impure thoughts from their impressionable heads.

 Cecil Blubberpuss in much happier days.

     Oh, if only my brother Cecil and I had such a tackle-the-gay-away camp when we were young. Cecil, my moon-faced kid brother, had always worried me and our late father, Ambrose Blubberpuss. Cecil was never one for sports and would dream aloud of becoming, on attaining 21 years of age, a male underwear catalog photographer. So in 1961, Father had packed us up and sent us to Monsignor Gassalasca O'Herlihy's annual Retreat For Nancy Boys With Impure Thoughts. As with the Romney Games, it offered little in the way of actual athletics (although Father Gas, as we called him, partly because of his rather unfortunate flatulent condition), would prevent children drowning in the lake from struggling to shore with a rowing oar until they learned a proper stroke. Amazingly, we'd lost only one little asthmatic boy that summer.
     Yet, when one warehouses boys aged 6-13 together, making them eat, sleep, make leather purses for Singapore and shower together, the devil will surely gain a foothold somewhere. So Father Gas got an ingenious idea that nowadays some liberal naysayers and fag-enablers would call "child abuse": Every time a boy was caught embracing another or even looking at him for more than three seconds, Father Gas would whip the boy's bare posterior with a freshly-cut switch from the woods and then with his own two hands smear the juice from jalapeno peppers into the lesions, sometimes spending up to two hours at this harsh but loving form of discipline.
     (Sidebar: After nearly 20 years as headmaster of this camp, Father Gas was then suddenly reassigned by His Holiness and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Last we'd heard, he was made the gym teacher and locker room attendant at Boy's Town before abruptly getting relocated again and put in charge of personally dressing the singers of the Vienna Boy's Choir.)
     No doubt, since it appears as if you'll be catering to fully-grown men, that particular form of comeuppance will no doubt be optional at most (depending on the convictions of your men of the cloth). Well, Cecil, despite being a Blubberpuss, was always of a delicate constitution and had somehow run afoul of Father Gas's strict but fair code. Well, on this fateful night, Father Gas, an otherwise erudite and judicious man, had nonetheless exercised some horrendous judgment as he had my little brother bent over his lap, stripped to the waist but not the way you think, near our roaring campfire. The combination of the humiliation plus the potent juice of the jalapeno peppers forcefully smeared into his posterior was too much for my brother to handle. He'd let loose with a flatulent blast what would have ordinarily done Father Gas proud but in this case produced a geyser of flame that had burnt two boys and singed off their eyebrows. This was followed by a somewhat semi-fluid release of what we'd had for dinner that night.
     In a strange way, this proved most efficacious as any boys who were still afflicted with impure homosexual thoughts were by this time forever cured (In fact, at the 30th reunion held at the camp doubling as my corporate retreat, we'd learned two of those boys went on throw away God's greatest gift rather than live with the shame and stigma of such impure inclinations.). Upon returning from his summer-long cultivation of Swedish industrialists and several members of their patriotic National Socialist movement, Father forbade us from ever going back to Father Gas's camp. Cecil, fortunately, did not make good on his dream of being a catalog male underwear photographer, even though he became an interior decorator in the Soho district.
     My point, however, is that if we had during the godless, hedonistic Kennedy years the same camp as will begin tomorrow in Pennsylvania, perhaps my little brother Cecil could've been saved from a life of pastel and swatches. Perhaps, unless your athletic program is set in stone, you could include as a further inducement to more manly thoughts a regimen of Turkish oil wrestling or something from Greco-Roman times, as I cannot think of a sport least likely susceptible to homosexual thoughts as an import from ancient Greece.
     I remain, most manfully yours,

     Cyril Blubberpuss, Esq.