Chik-Fil-A: Why Can’t a Chicken Sandwich Just Be a Chicken Sandwich?
A Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant location on an early summer evening in West St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Tony Webster via Flickr
Yesterday’s big news was an announcement from fast food restaurant Chik-fil-A that it was revamping its donations and would no longer be sending contributions to certain groups it had in the past. Normally, this kind of press release wouldn’t be a blip on anybody’s radar. But the restaurant in question is Chik-fil-A and so it’s yet the latest battle in the culture wars.
Chik-fil-A, for those of you living under a rock, is a fast food restaurant that originated here in Atlanta and is known for its founder’s religious beliefs which carry on in the corporate culture today. The restaurants are closed on Sundays. They contribute donations to many charitable groups. For this reason, they are a favorite among Evangelical Christians. Every church box lunch I’ve ever received was catered by Chik-Fil-A. But such devotion has also made it a target for LGBTQ activists because some of these donations supposedly go to “anti gay” causes.
I’ve always found that claim problematic. Just because an organization is run on Christian principles or supports traditional values doesn’t mean their “anti-gay.” It’s not like CFA has been sending money to the “Westboro Baptist Church” or the Klan. But they HAVE been donating to the Salvation Army. At least they have been until now. But CFA will no longer be donating to them or to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Since when did the Salvation Army become anti-gay? They don’t turn away gay people in need. They don’t spend money on lobbyists to fight gay marriage. They offer the same benefits to married gay couples they employ. They do take a biblical view of homosexual behavior, but that’s true of pretty much every faith based organization in existence. But apparently that’s enough to label them anti-gay, and for CFA to have been smeared with the same label for supporting them financially.
Some conservatives were naturally upset at the news. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who famously organized the “Chik-fil-A Appreciation Day” where millions of Christians lined up at their local CFA’s Tweeted out “Today, @ChickfilA betrayed loyal customers for $$. I regret believing they would stay true to convictions of founder Truett Cathey. Sad.” But if conservatives were outraged, liberals were – unimpressed. GLAAD director issued an email stating “Chick-fil-A investors, employees, and customers can greet today’s announcement with cautious optimism, but should remember that similar press statements were previously proven to be empty.” So, Chik-Fil-A managed to alienate its supporters while simultaneously failing to appease its critics. Or, as the Babylon Bee so brilliantly put it: “Chick-Fil-A Trades Adoring Christian Fans For Outraged Mob That Won’t Be Appeased Until Their Every Demand Is Met.”
So, why would CFA risk alienating its most ardent defenders? Have the protests taken a toll? They’ve built the franchise into the 3rd largest fast food chain in America, but were forced to close their first London location following protests. Several cities as well as college campuses have declared CFA unwelcome. Did they decide that changing some contributions would be a small sacrifice to make?
Or, was there another factor involved? Popeye’s chicken rolled out their own version of the chicken sandwich this Summer, and it proved so popular that they ran out of it in a week! There have been fights in the waiting line, and even a stabbing as Americans rushed to try this new delicacy. You’d think nobody ever had a chicken sandwich before. For my money, both McDonald’s and Arby’s have outstanding versions. But for some reason, Popeyes’s sandwich was seen as a liberal victory over CFA. Social media was overrun with memes touting one over the other. Did the hype influence CFA? Or has all of this affected sales?
Over the years, conservatives have laughed at the liberal backlash to CFA. But now, they’re seeing one of their own. Will they now turn on the restaurant they used to love?
Personally, I’m torn about this. First of all, I totally support CFA’s right to give money or not to give money to whichever organization they want. I also support the right of my liberal friends to decline spending money at any business they find personally offensive. Most conservatives shun this type of thinking. We’re not supposed to let politics dictate all of our decisions. And I get that. I even agree, to a point.
It just feels like conservatives are always on the losing end of these battles. A few years ago, the Susan G Komen foundation attempted a similar move by announcing that it would no longer donate money to Planned Parenthood. Reaction was swift, and Komen backed down within days. The fact that a charity devoted to breast cancer lost a PR battle with the world’s largest abortion chain tells you a lot about modern day America. I’ve never donated money to Komen for this very reason. I refuse to buy anything with one of those pink ribbons on it because I don’t want one dime of my hard earned money ending up in Planned Parenthood’s coffers and I don’t care how much good Komen does otherwise.
Maybe I’ve been dealing with this longer than most people. When I was in college, it was well known that Papa John’s pizza donated to pro life causes and was therefore to be shunned. My friends and I were all ardent feminists, but we had a crappy dining hall and Pizza Hut wouldn’t deliver to us. So, you had to pay the Papa John’s guy quickly and sneak the pizza off to your room. I once witnessed a black friend be verbally chastised by another black student for the unpardonable sin of drinking a Coke (which had not yet divested itself of South African holdings.) Liberals take these issues seriously? Why don’t conservatives?
Some people claim that boycotts don’t work. But they can. One recent example is the NFL. Viewership was down 17 percent the year after Colin Kaepernick began his kneeling protests during the National Anthem, and most people cited that as the reason they quit watching. Personally, I refused to join in on the boycott (although the Falcons record this year has me reconsidering.) I’ve lost too many of the things I enjoy in this life to let this jackass take football from me. But I know a lot of people who gave up the NFL over this and apparently it had an effect. The NFL cracked down on the kneelers and Kaepernick has been sitting on the sidelines for 3 years.
Or maybe we’re all just making too much out of this. Chick-fil-A President and COO Tim Tassopoulos appeared to back track on the initial announcement saying that CFA may contribute to these groups again in the future. “No organisation will be excluded from future consideration–faith-based or non-faith-based.”
I personally won’t quit eating at Chick-fil-A no matter what they decide. I’ve been eating there my whole life. My mother used to take me there every year after I saw Santa and we would split a chicken salad sandwich (which they no longer make!) But I am disappointed in this news, especially if it was indeed a move to appease the social justice warriors. In an ideal world, we would all be able to enjoy the tasty chicken sandwich of our choice without politics getting involved. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where even your lunch choice is seen as a political statement. And like it or not, when one side is willing to politicize every single decision and the other side wants to just eat in peace, then you know which side is going to be wiped out.
Photo by Tony Webster 
I think that the issue of gay accommodation for LGBT commercial interests is going to continue for awhile and it comes from a very particular historical legacy. As a gay man, we’ve seen the photos, videos, etc. of when we couldnt exist in the open – and those come from less than 50 years ago.
Maybe it’s an inferiority complex, maybe it’s a weird Messianic complex, but it’s a feeling – that these groups would send us back to the closet if they really could. I think of Rod Dreher, who besides his continual crusade against ‘LGBT totalitarianism’, aleays drops a line about how the treatment of the gays back then was shameful…yet there doesn’t seem to be any evidence he opposed those shameful things back then, only retroactively after there was social defeat.
We were once arrested for merely existing. We ain’t gonna let it happen again and if overwhelming victory is what it calls for, so be it.Report
“They do take a biblical view of homosexual behavior”
an incorrect view, because the context for Paul’s writing on the subject makes it read like a modern SJW railing against Toxic Masculinity and Rape Culture. If anything, Paul would be okay with two persons of the same gender in a monogamous relationship, so long as it was based on mutual respect and adoration (and they both made sure to go to church.)Report
The Hebrew Scriptures kinda might technically have some stuff in there that could be interpreted as homophobic. (They made a movie about it.)
I mean, of course, we live under a New Covenant.Report
Also, no cheeseburgers.Report
No Coke, Pepsi.Report
No fries, only chips.Report
After looking at its business model awhile back, it needs to bite the dust. Crazy leftist centralized ownership of production. The fact it made a hard left turn is no surprise, it was built leftist.Report
as for Chick-Fil-A, whatever, they can do what they want, but it’s interesting to watch people get situationally-ethical on whether or not it’s a good thing to use boycotts and protests to force a private actor to conform to your concept of moral behavior.Report
The thing that irks me is that a lot of these boycotts, be they liberal or conservative, seem driven less by sound examination of the facts on the ground than by memes fueled by political animus.
So I pick my battles based on my own research into the issue. If all my evidence is memes on social media and hyperbolic Slate or WND articles, I’m not going to change my behavior.Report
Much of this animus comes from being in a pretty evenly split, but quite ideologically divided, electorate. If we had one political direction to “progress” in we wouldn’t see much of this, as everyone would be on much the same page. But as we do not have that, we can expect to see more and more instances such as this until there is reckoning (if there ever is.)
We can expect to see similar instances in England over Brexit, and Europe in general, over the next few decades.Report
The reason a chicken sandwich can’t be just a chicken sandwich is that our societal norms of behavior and our norms of freedom of behavior are each bounded and limited.
“Freedom of behavior” never, ever, means “anything you want”. It doesn’t ever even mean “anything that’s legal”.
In his book “The Righteous Mind” Jonathan Haidt had a good exploration of “nonharmful taboos” like adult consensual incest or eating human flesh where even if it was legal and harmed no one, made the respondents uneasy and vociferously opposed.
Society constructs boundaries around our freedom and enforces them with tools like shaming and shunning. And those boundaries are constantly shifting so that was was taboo yesterday is acceptable today and vice versa.
Right now, the boundaries around homosexuality have shifted and groups like conservative Christians who opposed it now find themselves in the minority and they themselves are the shunned and shamed.
And yeah, this process can be disconcerting, when we consider the implications for tomorrow. Who will be shunned, what viewpoints will be thought shameful and an worthy of being cast out of the social circle?Report
Since social objectivity is unresolved among factions, society doesn’t construct boundaries, only factions can create boundaries where the social objectivity is mostly resolved within the faction.
What remains is mostly will to power people within will to power factions within will to power constructs.Report
I may not be “conservative” but I’m no leftist either and I def don’t shop a certain places because I don’t agree with their policies. But I also don’t broadcast it. I find it much easier to ignore all the sound an fury from certain quarters….I’ll continue to do my thing..Report
Depends whether you want the company to change their practices. If management doesn’t know what changes would bring you through their doors, they can’t make those changes.Report
In my continuing bid to lose friends and reduce my influence, I’d suggest that y’all are looking at this wrong.
It isn’t CFA, its the fact that its the Salvation Army.
For me, if asked to donate to the Salvation Army, my response is, no thanks… I donate to Christian Charities. The fact that a large corporation supported the Salvation Army strikes me as about as vanilla as one could get and still signal that maybe there’s a sort of Christian connection.
When this popped, I expected to find a list of squirrelly evangelical idiosyncratic micro-charities* that the founder may have insisted upon. To find out that the “Controversial Anti-Gay Charity” was the Salvation Army… well, that struck me as stealing more than one base. If you can write the Salvation Army out-of-bounds, well…
So if you can’t see that, then I don’t think you’re talking about the real issue.
*FCA is closer to idiosyncratic Evangelical and I could see a corporation thinking it might want to broaden its charitable giving to be less idiosyncratic, by, like, upping their donations to the Salvation Army.Report
The Salvation Army has been pretty known as homophobic for years. I don’t donate to them.Report
I’m sure you do, and I’m sure you don’t.
Let’s be clear: The Salvation Army is the enemy… say it loudly so everyone can hear in 2020.Report
Losing for the right reasons is just as good as winning! Better, in fact, because if you lose, then you aren’t in charge and therefore you aren’t responsible for things going wrong!Report
“Most conservatives shun this type of thinking. We’re not supposed to let politics dictate all of our decisions.”
Hahahahahahahahaha. The Dixie chicks, Nike, and a large number of other products/people would like to have a word with you. Let’s just say BSDI.
Say what you will about CFA, but they’re the best fast food franchise in terms of food quality, service, and employees. If I were starting a fast food franchise, I would work there first to see what their training process is like.Report
The fact that Chick-fil-A became a cause celebre among conservatives after liberals started objecting first to its CEO’s positions on LGBT issues, and then to its pattern of donations strongly suggests that conservatives do not, in fact, shun this kind of thinking.Report
Exactly–the author even references the NFL–that line struck me as demonstrably false.Report
As Yogi Berra once said, “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, you can’t stop them.” CFA can donate where it pleases, people who want to eat there can eat there, those who don’t want to eat there don’t have to.Report
There was a minor kerfuffle about this over the last week when Charlie’s Angel’s bombed.
Yogi Berra’s insight may no longer be applicable.
It’s, apparently, no longer enough to say that people who buy a Particular Media Product are good/bad. We’re now in a place where people who do *NOT* buy a Particular Media Product are good/bad.Report
I said in the discussion on Obama’s comments on wokeness that this is our politics on consumer capitalism and I still believe it is.
I randomly saw the Charlie’s Angels thing too. I like to think that the lack of fanfare that has gotten is a (positive) sign that some boundaries are being established around interesting points of discussion versus ludicrous excuses for failure.Report
So the quality doensn’t matter? ‘Cause I heard Charlie’s Angel’s sucked.Report
I dunno. I didn’t see it.
But Elizabeth Banks had a handful of statements about how… eh, I’ll just let you read the roundup at Buzzfeed.
I am a fan of people spending their entertainment dollars on stuff that they like. Indeed, I am even fine with people spending their entertainment dollars on stuff that panders to them. I always feel weird when I argue against people who seem to think differently.Report
Maybe she should have just called Milla Jovovich.Report
The Charlie’s Angels things strikes me as different.
In the free market model, you bring the good to the public, and they’ll buy it if they like it. The way the studio model works, you bring your movie to the studio, and they market it based on their perception of the film, and then the public gets a chance to buy it if they want to. Now, the studio may fail to market a movie because it’s awful, or because they don’t think it’ll make them money, and the public may avoid a movie because they haven’t seen the marketing or because the marketing of the movie doesn’t make them think they’ll like it. So there’s an extra step in the middle that complicates matters.
OK though, thinking about that, maybe you could say that the same thing happens with different interest groups, that they’re trying to insert themselves into the process as anti-marketers through organized campaigns or viral marketing. Either way, I wouldn’t want to try to sell a lousy chicken sandwich or a Charlie’s Angels movie.Report
If I were trying to sell a lousy product, I’d have to find a hook. “Buy my product and become good!” might be one avenue. “If you don’t buy my product, you’ll become worse!” would be another.
But I’ve reached the point where I see appeals to the morality of the purchaser/avoider as weird flags. We saw this with Joker. We saw this with Charlie’s Angels.
I would like to think that the people who care more about morality than money will eventually be driven to the corners of the market… I mean, that’s what happened last time, right?Report
What do you mean by “driven to corners of the market”?
That aside, the problem with Charlie’s Angels was that they forgot to tell people about the moral imperative. Or they told them a week after the movie tanked.Report
From mainstream to niche is all I meant.
“God Is Dead With A Vengeance” and the like. “Live Free Or God Is Dead”.Report
None of this is new at all. In the 70’s people started to talk about buying american products to support the Good Ol US of A. Products having been using patriotism or love or masculinity/femininity etc etc since the advent of modern advertising.Report
I wasn’t trying to say that this is new, Greg.
I was trying to say that I’ve finally noticed a pattern.
(Also, the movie Bushwhacked, which I saw in the theater (to my chagrin) had a bunch of commercials *NOT* with clips from the movie but with people in the movie theater lobby saying “IT WAS FUNNY!”. It was then that I realized that comedies that do not have trailers that have clips that make you laugh are trailers for movies that will not make you laugh.)Report
Your consumption defines you. Under the old way, we knew that if you consume *THIS*, then you are a good person. If you consume *THAT*, then you are a bad person.
Chik-fil-A was one of the things that we knew that members of Team Evil ate.
We could easily imagine American Culture as a corpse in a coffin and the good people in the pews placed a single Chik-fil-A sandwich on the corpse’s chest, for the Sin Eater to wander into the church to eat noisily, while all of the good people in the pews averted their eyes.
This might have been sustainable forever… but the multi-millionaires at the top don’t understand the social role that S. Truett Cathy was playing and hated being considered unfashionable despite all of their filthy lucre. They wanted to stop this without understanding that we don’t want the Sin Eaters to get hungry. They play a very, very important role.Report
There is this tendency among a lot of people, including political people, to want all choices to exist as if they were in vacuums and contain no more moral weight than the decision between buying raspberry jam or buying orange marmalade. Life does not work that way. For many, many years CFA built their identity via evangelicalism. Staying closed on Sunday was a fine if idiosyncratic choice. They also choose to donate money to a lot of right-wing organizations with anti-LGBT goals. This takes things out of the “It is only a chicken sandwich” variety and puts them into a “who am I supporting by buying a chicken sandwich from here?”
This is not that difficult but Americans continue the grand tradition of “You can’t have it both ways but both ways is the only way I want it….”Report
All of this is true Saul. The problem is that it really is just a chicken sandwich for 99% of the people who buy one on a given day, despite the anecdotal evidence of the OP. If you are the third(really?) largest fast food chain in the US, you are not serving evangelical church lunches as your biscuit and butter clientele.Report
If I lived in a city with a huge homeless problem, I could easily see hating the homeless and hating the people who helped them. No! We want them to go away!, I’d think, as I saw someone giving them a bowl of soup and a kind word. DON’T FEED THEM!!! IF YOU DO THAT TO CATS, YOU FIND YOURSELF WITH CATS!!!
Which makes me idly wonder: Do the most pro-LGBT cities in the country have the worst homeless problems?Report
I’m struggling, and failing, to see a line connecting attitudes towards homosexuality and homelessness.
Do you have a diagram or something?Report
Jaybird trolls with all the Q-signs.Report
I didn’t say that there was one.
I am, instead, wondering if the cities that we consider to be the most pro-LGBT cities (defined as cities that have the most pro-LGBT policies) also happen to be cities that have the most homeless.
Because, if they’re not (or there’s no correlation at all), my idle thought can be dismissed.Report
I am, instead, wondering if the cities that we consider to be the most pro-LGBT cities (defined as cities that have the most pro-LGBT policies) also happen to be cities that have the most homeless.
Well, yes. See, they are BIG cities. They have a lot more people, with and without homes, in them. NYC has a lot more homeless people than Boise because it has a lot more of everybody. Except maybe white supremacist militiamen, and I wouldn’t be too sure about that.Report
I was going to do a google on “most LGBT-friendly cities” and “cities with worst homeless problems” and see if they matched up but, yeah, you’re probably right.Report
I went ahead and did the work for you, Jaybird.
Top Homeless Cities
San Jose, CA
7.254 homeless
San Diego, CA
8,576 homeless
Seattle, WA
12,112 homeless
Los Angeles, CA
49,955 homeless
NYC
78,676 homeless
LGBTQIAPZF-friendly cities
Portland, OR
3,801 homeless
San Francisco, CA
8,011
Providence RI
1,101 statewide
Austin, TX
2,255 homeless
Baltimore, MD
2,669 homeless
Love your use of spivak’s razor. I expect my royalty check soon.Report
Spivak’s Razor?Report
“If it looks right, it is!”Report
I’m not sure that I’d define “worst homeless problem” defined with sheer numbers for the reasons mentioned by CJ.
It’d probably have to be something like “homeless per capita” or something like “homelessness has gone up despite additional housing being made available”.
But, at that point, it looks like putting fingers on the scale.Report
Quite a limb you walked out on there J BReport
“NYC has a lot more homeless people than Boise because it has a lot more of everybody.”
uh
so Boise and New York are exactly the same except one’s bigger.
lolReport
Just a matter of isolating the relevant variable from the irrelevant one.Report
Idaho, as of 2018, had 5,500 homeless people. Let’s say 1,500 hang around Boise. A bustling city of 228,790 souls. .006% of Boise’s population is homeless. In comparison, my home city of Colorado Springs’s has .003% of its denizens identifying as homeless despite having about the same number of homeless people.
Yet in the part of Colorado Springs where I lived, politics were definitely left of center. Therefore the homeless population was markedly more visible which lends a certain gravitas to Jaybird’s assertation which is still warm from whence he drew it. New York City, replete with every color of the liberal spectrum can say .009% of its population is homeless.
Coincidence?
Also we’re not counting those who weren’t counted by the city, volunteers, nor the homeless who feel obliged to have themselves counted as being homeless. The problem may be far greater and the liberals may be working overtime, like they were in the House yesterday, to cover up their own mess.Report
Hey, I just googled “cities with worst homelessness problem” and number one at the top of the page was this.
Which talks about states rather than cities, for some reason. (Probably because it’s 3 days old.)
(Spoiler: Number One Problem is cost of housing.)Report
I don’t think this is necessarily a sign that conservative areas have better policies on eliminating the homeless. They might just harass them more.Report
For certain folks, harassing them more is pretty much the definition of better policy.Report
FTR didn’t that conservative bastion NYC make it illegal to be homeless?
I mean you guys typically don’t even clear the threshold of the NAP.Report
No.Report
Ah, they did for several years create a bunch of laws making the activities basically illegal, and it appears those laws have been changed within the last 3-5 years?
(I guess reality has a libertarian bias)Report
Your city solved its homeless problem by making homelessness illegal and tearing down their camps, member? I don’t know that this has anything to do with cats or whether it’s proLGBT or not.Report
From what I recall, the argument was that the camps had to be torn down for environmental reasons.
Clean waterways and parks, that sort of thing.Report
True, but isn’t that always a reason to not be friendly towards the homeless? I mean, that stuff is very important, but how much of it was fueled by an “ewww, homeless”? (I don’t really know the answer to that–my only guess is that at least a little bit)Report
I absolutely assume that the “THIS IS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE!” was the shield that “ewwwwww, homeless” hid behind.Report
Since a significant segment of the homeless population tends to be LGBT, Jay, your question is impossibly circular.Report
There are ways in which it isn’t.
They involve “class” being the foundation, though (rather than any other identity you might want to pick).Report
Which invalidates your question from the other direction. *shrugs*Report
oh dear god, gay homeless? are they gay because they are, or are they gay out of necessity?
also what’s your source for this, or are you drawing upon the same warm and moist resouce Jaybird drew upon to make his arguments?Report
You can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_in_the_United_States
Pure anecdote, but over the years I’ve known quite a few homeless young people. A lot of them were LGBT. That said, I did know a homeless guy who was pretty str8, but ended up “gay for pay” to survive. I’m not sure how widespread that is, nor do I know how the various studies account for that fact.
That said, there are a lot of homeless trans kids. While “gay for pay” is a real thing, “trans for pay” is not.Report
> Pure anecdote
Sure sounds a lot like Sondaland’s testimony to the House of Representatives today.
Genuine question and not trolling this time: Was their homelessness situational and eventually worked out, or are they still living on the streets today? I always figured the LGBTQIA types eventually got their shit together being tighter than a policeman’s union.Report
That’s a pretty naive viewpoint. The reality is way more complicated.
I’ll say this: spending your late teens and early twenties living on the streets and doing survival sex work, while other kids are going to university, is the sort of thing that affects your life outcome. This, of course, is true for everyone, not only queer kids. However, I frequently mention the metaphor of “compound detriment.” If you understand how compound interest is a powerful investment strategy (and I’m sure you do), I think you can glean how a small but constant disadvantage can add up over a lifetime. In short, being a homeless young cis dude is different from being a homeless trans girl. And yes, a lot of places have special LGBT shelters, but actually those places are pretty rare. They get talked about, but that doesn’t mean that one exists in some random queer kid’s city, nor, if one does exist, that it has space, etc.
Furthermore, there is a pretty big gray area between sleeping in a tent and having a stable living situation. I know a lot of people who drift in and out of homelessness. Often their housing is contingent on sex. Often the person willing to house them is an abusive narcissist. That’s not an easy choice.
“But surely they have other options.”
Yeah, technically, maybe. There are 300 million people in this country. However, a homeless queer kid doesn’t know all 300 million people. They only know the people they know, many of whom are themselves in a precarious situation.
The LGBT community exists. There is a fair amount of money there, but a lot of that money is wrapped up in corporate donations that go to fund “gala” events filled with posh gays. (I’ve been to one of those. It was — let’s just say the only people I knew in the room were the DJ and a few drag queens. In other words, I knew the talent, not those running the thing.)
I like to think a fair bit of that money does go to actually help queer people in trouble, but there is a spectrum. Sure, there are “LGBT centers” with various amounts of support, but social work is hard. The shelters only have so many beds. The group homes are full. Often the group homes are themselves a shitshow, for all the predictable reasons.
And you’re cold and it’s late and your gf kicked you out, and this skeevy guy outside a bar is offering you 70 bucks to let him suck your dick. What do you do?Report
Yes, LGBT kids who are at-risk of being homeless are more likely to end up in a gay friendly area than the middle of Kansas or even a blue city in the middle of a ruby red state. This is not the ownage you think it is.Report
Jaybird thinks everything owns the libs. At this point. Jaybird thinks everything owns the libs.Report
No, I see them as hollow men, claiming moral authority that they obviously don’t have (and, I suspect, even they know they don’t have).
Because it’s as obvious as Trump’s similar lack of moral authority.
“The emperor is naked!”
“Stop trying to own the emperor.”Report
Which is kinda Saul’s point.
You start with a conclusion of moral equivalence, then add whatever weight you need to keep the scales balanced.
So if conservatives behave with cruelty to gays, well by God, liberals must be, um…allowing them to be homeless, so as you see, both sides are morally equal.Report
It’s not moral equivalence. It’s seeing a lack of moral authority despite claims to same.
For what it’s worth, I think Trump’s lack of moral authority is obvious. Like, there it is. Look at it!
And then I look at stuff like what happened with the adoption agencies once we determined that it should be illegal to discriminate against gay adoptive parents.
Did anybody step in to fill the void?
If nobody did, I can’t help but wonder if the goal to end the Salvation Army wouldn’t be similar. It’s not about filling any voids for what the Salvation Army actually does.
Because, let’s face it, who cares what they actually do?Report
I think that’s the problem, that you see political battles as two groups seeking your moral judgement of their character.
Instead of seeing this discussion as “Is it right or wrong to treat gay people as equals?”, you see the issue as “who is morally superior, gays or fundamentalists?”Report
I also see questions like “what is it worth to us to feed the homeless?” studiously ignored when we’re discussing the cancellation of an organization dedicated to doing that sort of thing.
If there is any moral stature to be gained from it, The Salvation Army is swimming in it.
It seems to be worth less than what can be found in one of those kettles next to one of those annoying bell ringers in front of the supermarket.Report
So this is the logical connection between gay rights and homelessness, that the groups hostile to gays are doing good work?Report
I’m noticing that there is a logical connection now when, before, I thought they were orthogonal to each other.
But here we are.Report
OK so lets assume that SA is doing good work.
But, isn’t that true for all groups everywhere?
I mean, the Black Panthers, KKK, Al-Queda, Hezbollah Shining Path, Red Brigades and Catholic Church all perform charity work.
And not just perfunctory window dressing. In many parts of the world, organizations like these are providing a genuinely good service which is otherwise not available.
But of course, we don’t let that prevent us from fighting the other work they do, work that is unjust and ugly.
Why should we let the good work SA does block us from demanding Chick Fil A stop giving them material support?Report
Why should we let the good work SA does block us from demanding Chick Fil A stop giving them material support?
Oh, you can do whatever you want.
You can even complain when people say “that’s not moral opposition, it’s aesthetic.”Report
Is my objection to funding SA moral or aesthetic?
Is your objection to the objection to funding SA aesthetic or moral?Report
From here? Hard to tell.
Have you suggested any alternatives to Salvation Army that meet your moral standards? If you haven’t, I might conclude that your opposition is merely aesthetic and all you’re doing is calling out something that you find to be ugly.Report
Again, you’re viewing this issue of CFA funding SA as a referendum on the litigants’ moral character.
And you’ve made it clear that your opinion of one side is negative, so the only question is how much weight you need to add to the scales to get the desired result.Report
And you’ve made it clear that your opinion of one side is negative
You mistake “not glowingly positive” as “negative”.
It ain’t that I’m saying “you’re bad”. It’s that I’m saying “you’re claiming goodness that I ain’t seeing”.Report
You don’t think this technique of viewing rights and justice as a referendum on the participant’s moral character is the very essence of “mere aesthetics”?Report
I see it as, there is more value in trying to get the SA to be consistently benign towards LGBTQ than there is in trying to end SA because they could not prevent various local ops from being hostile.
If we look at DavidTCs comment about SA, it might not be possible to get SA to crack down on locals and enforce the desired behavior, in which case, ending the org might be necessary. But it will also be painful because SA does a lot for the poor and homeless population as a whole and ending the org would leave a social service void that other orgs and/or government would have to step in to fill.
So if those other institutions are not prepared to step up, we may want to be careful about trying to end SA, and spend more effort getting it to reform.Report
I think that would be worse.
Refusing to patronize businesses that support SA still leaves SA as a viable private organization which can be supported by other forms of donations.
Turning this into a binary of “SA must conform or be destroyed” is exactly the wildest fears of the Rod Dreher crowd.Report
It is the wildest fear, but ultimately the SA exists because people want to give it money, and what gives Rod Dreher the shits is that it might no longer be able to attract people’s money if it continues to try to pander to assholes like Rod Dreher.Report
I see it just as studiously avoided when the question is what an organization that wants to feed the homeless should do in order to ensure that other people keep giving it money to feed the homeless.Report
I’d suggest they come out with a Q&A like the one they came out with and Richard linked to below.
Check it out!
Tell me what you think they should have said instead.Report
“There is nothing wrong with LGBT people, same sex marriage should be legal, and LGBT people deserve legal protection against housing and employment discrimination.”
Pretty easy, huh?Report
I mean, that’s not word for what what you said, but it covers much of the same ground.Report
Huh weird if it’s so close I wonder why they don’t say what I said.Report
https://centralusa.salvationarmy.org/indiana/contact-us/Report
Jaybird if someone came here an argued openly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, would you condemn that person or just try to make all the liberals feel bad because they did not see anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as a valid argument/political opinion?Report
I like to think that I’d argue that the theory was wrong.
Because I’d like to think that if I grew complacent and just yelled “THAT’S ANTI-SEMITIC!” as if it were an argument in itself (because it worked so well), I’d eventually use that argument in defense of stuff that actually would benefit from debate.
And then, if I found that it’d stopped working, I might find myself scrambling.
Why do you ask?Report
The question was what you would do, not what you’d like to think you’d do.Report
I guess you’ve got me there.Report
Because it sounds like the desire to troll overcomes any sense of reason or decency. Not achieving 100 percent utopia does not damn the entirety of liberalism which is pretty much your implication.Report
Oh, Saul. 100% Utopia is not even close to possible.
If you think that that is what I am trying to imply, please let me apologize now and say “I am sorry. I never intended to make you think that I thought that Utopia was possible.”
If we agree that Utopia is not possible, now we get to start haggling about the achievable, I suppose.Report
I am not settling for no stinkin’ demitopia or semitopia, or any other fraction topia! I was promised utopia, and I demand a full topia. Anything less would seem distopian, or at least a sell-out to compromise with the distopians who are still in the gene pool.Report
When I realized that one man’s Utopia is another woman’s Dystopia, my mind was blown.
What if there is no “one size fits all”?
What if “one size fits most” is the best we can do?
If “one size fits most” is the best we can do, do we have an obligation to fat-shame?Report
Do you believe that there are no negative consequences to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as worthy of debate?Report
If the conspiracy theory has to do with blood libel, of course not. If the conspiracy theory has to do with stuff that touches on Israeli policy in the occupied territories, yeah, I think that there is room for debate even if some of the critics of Israel descend into anti-Semitic tropes.
I mean, we can’t let Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib make it so that Israel policy can’t be criticized by people who are not them.Report
I don’t support BDS. However, they have a full freespeech right to do what they want. If someone at BDS wants to consider me an evil person for shopping at a business that they oppose fine. So be it. We disagree about something.
If you want to eat at CFA or Cracker Barrel fine but acknowledge that the organizations use money to support anti-LBGT causes and expect some heat for that. This is what life is made of.Report
If we’re reasoning by contagion then merely existing as a white person in 2019 means you’re benefiting from hundreds of years of global slavery, so, have fun with that.Report
Well, we’ve been challenged to define what it means to be “anti-LGBTQ” and whether simply being affiliated with Christianity is enough to qualify for that. I’m not much of a “define the terms” sort of guy, because I don’t think that’s usually a productive way to move the ball forward in a discussion. But that was the challenge a conservative friend, who was more upset about this Chic-fil-A business than I would have thought reasonable, made to me. It took a bit of refining, but that was where we wound up.
Here is my basic stake of claim:
Not all Christian or Christian-adjacent entities are anti-LGBTQ. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that not all flavors of Christianity interpret LGBTQ affinity or even romantic/sexual activity as necessarily sinful. The second reason is that even if that entity interprets Christianity to identify LGBTQ activity or affinity as somehow inherently sinful, that entity can choose to treat it like any other sin, or like a sin of lesser importance, and put an emphasis on other portions of their theology. There are lots of things that are sins under Christianity, and few of them get called out for special attention in most entity activities.
When an entity likely crosses the line is when it interprets some sort of special mandate to call out, prohibit, or otherwise specially address LGBTQ behavior and/or affinity. A little digging around into the two entities in question revealed some ambiguities as to both.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) requires all of its staff members, from executives down to coaches, to sign a statement of values which includes an oath explicitly prohibiting engaging in LGBTQ activity. Individual athletes and scholarship recipients are NOT required to sign that statement of values. It is not clear the degree to which CFA enforces that oath on its staff and coaches, and it is not clear the degree to which the organization or people acting on its behalf make it a point to preach the sinfulness of LGBTQ affinity or behavior. It’s quite likely that some individuals are more aggressive about that than others. After some public pressure was brought to bear on them, they made it a point to publicize that LGBTQ teens are eligible for, and no doubt have already received, scholarships from CFA, although CFA will also not back down from its values statement applicable to staff and coaches. It appears that the official stance of CFA regarding LGBTQ students receiving scholarships is akin to “we don’t ask and they don’t tell.”
Salvation Army (SA) has been called out on a number of occasions for its explicit denunciation of LGBTQ affinity and LGBTQ behavior. It’s been accused in a number of instances of making itself inhospitable to or turning away individuals who were in need, with various consequences up to and including at least one death. SA denies responsibility for these incidents, and points out that its mission and values statements have always indicated that it offers help to anyone in need. After public pressure was brought to bear on SA, it amended its statements to specifically call out LGBTQ people as within the category of recipients of its charitable activities. The extent to which these top-level statements have trickled down to individual, on-the-ground shelters is not clear, nor is it clear whether the sermons administered to shelter residents are focused on condemnation of LGBTQ behavior. As with anything else, much likely depends on the individual who is delivering the sermon as well as the entity. However, it’s also the case that SA has engaged in several efforts, at state and local levels, to politically oppose the adoption of various anti-discrimination ordinances and laws explicitly protecting LGBTQ people in, among other things, receipt of aid aimed at housing-challenged and mentally-ill populations. SA refers to these activities as “protecting religious liberty,” and shows no indication of altering its commentary on similar political efforts elsewhere in the future.
Those appear to be the big-picture facts. Is that “anti-LGBTQ”? Is that “homophobia”? Or is it, to borrow another writer’s phrase, “mere Christianity”?Report
The problem I keep coming back to is that if a entity is supposed to be a entity that promotes Christian values, how is it supposed to contend with the several biblical passages that are in conflict with LGBT behavior or perpetuating it’s existence?
I have mentioned Biblical objectivity before, and if the way to resolve biblical objectivity is to resolve its truth components….. how can a entity claim to have biblical objectivity (christian values) yet not live to the standards of the biblical truths? Or maybe a case can be made that there is other passages within the bible that could make a case against the other passages, and then the truth is unresolved. But, that leads to the same problems seen in social truth that the truth components are mostly unresolved. If the truth components are unresolved then who can say what christian values are?Report
Q: [I]f a[n] entity is supposed to be a entity that promotes Christian values, how is it supposed to contend with the several biblical passages that are in conflict with LGBT behavior or perpetuating it’s existence?
A: Beats me, but I’m the wrong guy to ask. Ask an Episcopalian. They seem Christian enough to me.
Q: If the truth components are unresolved then who can say what christian values are?
A: The ambiguity-of-truth-components problem does not seem to be an impediment to a lot of evangelicals issuing definitive pronouncements about “christian values.” At least, not for the evangelicals who get on TV, nor for the kinds of Christians who see Chik-fil-A’s decision to stop giving money to CFA and SA as a betrayal of those values.Report
Maybe we are into the weeds about discussing “kinds” of Christians.
I mean I don’t know what happens when the social objectivists point to the social truth and claim they are the winners of social objectivity.
Then the Biblical objectivists point to Biblical truth and claim they are the winners of biblical objectivity.
When that happens, I guess I’m the kind of Christian that would suppose God will sort this out.Report
Wasn’t really my intention to get into theology.
My point is, whether you’re a Christian or not, you can form an opinion about whether an organization deserves the label “anti-LGBTQ” or “homophobic.” To do that in a fair way, I think one needs to look at both what the entity says it stands for and what it actually does.Report
So if a entity were to claim biblical truth values, then there is some expectation it would follow those.
If it is making no claim, then there is no expectation.
Is that the opinion formations we are attempting to discuss, or is there something else.
And to be clear i think both entities, CFA, and SA, have attempted to claim biblical values when they can gain from it and depose it when they lose from it.Report
” if a entity is supposed to be a entity that promotes Christian values, how is it supposed to contend with the several biblical passages that are in conflict with LGBT behavior or perpetuating it’s existence?”
Christianity is not a splatbook. It’s not a set of Rules that you Have To Follow Exactly As Written.Report
Oh, I completely get that and that is the problem with BOTH Biblical truth and social truth.
What I said above about the resolution of Biblical truth was:
—“how can a entity claim to have biblical objectivity (christian values) yet not live to the standards of the biblical truths? Or maybe a case can be made that there is other passages within the bible that could make a case against the other passages, and then the truth is unresolved. But, that leads to the same problems seen in social truth that the truth components are mostly unresolved. If the truth components are unresolved then who can say what christian values are?”—
Now we can go a step further and say the truth components about christianity and the bible are unresolved, but the dude himself was pretty adamant when talking to the devil that: “It is written”….
And from that, I kind of figured Jesus wasn’t much of an anarchist and somewhat of a by the book guy. If you got something different, let me know.Report
Well I think it is the former. I am not Christian but I think it is a mistake to let right-leaning Evangelical/nondenominational types have a monopoly on defining Christianity. There are lots of Christians that are not Evangelical or conservative. I feel the same way when libertarians and right-wingers act and speak like they have monopolies on how to define “Liberty”and “Freedom” and seemingly keep those to the narrow confines of business and property rights that mainly benefit white dudes.
So this is a pushback on letting the right-wing get to define everything through their lens.Report
At least the conservatives have attempted to conserve the original definitions. What post modernism/progressivism/marxism has done to rat coitus meanings and definitions means nobody should trust the leftwards until they admit to it and clean that stinking pile of wreckage.
We are very likely to have a civil war over the two freedoms problem you guys created in the never ending quest to ‘free stuff’.Report
A reminder that “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” is as much a benediction as it is a denunciation.Report
If you mean to suggest that there’s a sort of infinite regression of sourced goods such that none of us can escape the slightest taint; I’ll have to agree. However, I’ll also go on record that you are mistaken with regards ethical choices qua choices; and that complexity is not an impediment to virtuous action; in fact, navigating complexity by ranking comparative good and harm is the first step in making an attempt a virtuous action. In which case, making market decisions inflected by virtues is, in fact, a function of being market actors. Stating “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” is then perhaps a true statement, but it is not a rational prescriptive statement. Perhaps we won’t see eye-to-eye, but I feel compelled to at least point out the difference with capitalist critique of an ethical mistake.Report
I actually think DD has the better of this. I would hazard to guess there’s virtually no one out there without sin if the phenomena in question is indeed sin. At best we have what you describe, that being a setting of priorities, which to me is fair enough. At the end of the day everyone has them. But the arguments about exactly where they should be when it comes to consumer goods seems to me a lot like arguing balls and strikes. Sometimes there’s merit but at the end of the day the game has to go on.
Which brings me to why I see insistence on hardcore line drawing to be particularly weak sauce if what we’re measuring is virtue. It doesn’t mean there’s never a point but the point itself is so easy to score as to be of negligible value in the assessment of virtue or anything else.
The more interesting question to me is the systematic one DD raises.Report
And if I can illustrate that this is the perfect demarcation between deontological line drawing and virtue ethics, then my job here is done.Report
Virtue Ethics seem to be in a waning period.Report
As a category within Moral Philosophy that will get you invited on certain panels at certain institutions this might be true(?). But the new iterations of “Emotivisim” are accounting for the criticisms of Virtue Ethics… and in some ways, that’s really the point of virtue ethics… figuratively moral philosophy as a craft is the baseline.Report
This new emotivism strikes me as closer to a Deontology without a deity (or, for that matter, a required reading list).
It’s not about moving to a flourishing, it’s about being sinners in the hands of an angry absence of God.
(We just need to ride this out until the Utilitarians argument that “this ain’t working!” is irrefutable by a critical mass.)Report
I didn’t say they were practicing the craft well…
There’s certainly growth in the deontology without a deity, but I think the pure Emotivist crowd is trying to deal with locus of self and phroenesis which presents a unique challenge that has strange calvinist outcomes/feedback loops for them. That is, they haven’t become virtue ethicists, but they are chewing through some of the ontological critiques.Report
“However, I’ll also go on record that you are mistaken with regards ethical choices qua choices; and that complexity is not an impediment to virtuous action…”
Sure, but there’s always someone who’s gonna say “well YEAH but what about X”, particularly in the reasoning-by-contagion we see here where eating a sandwich from restaurant C instead of restaurant P is taken to mean that you think gay people ought to be killed.
“[M]aking market decisions inflected by virtues is, in fact, a function of being market actors.”
It’s not actually market decisions we’re discussing, here (well, we kinda are, but it’s a more abstract market of personal relationships rather than a straight dollars-for-donuts one.) This is about Do I Hang Out With Joe Who Eats At Chik-Fil-A.Report
Specifically “Do I hang out online with Joe who Eats at Chik-Fil-A” because I’d bet good money the number of these hysterical Chik-Fil-A blowups that happen in meat space is tiny.Report
I agree, that’s the challenge:
“Sure, but there’s always someone who’s gonna say “well YEAH but what about X””
What about X is inescapable.
There are dangers to saying, there is no X.Report
“There are dangers to saying, there is no X.”
There are dangers to insisting that there is for reals really an X.
One of the dangers being that you have to pretend so hard that X is real that you start seeing it everywhere you look.Report
Also true. So then we agree? 🙂Report
It wasn’t a capitalist critique, so, no, you’re still completely wrong about what I meant.Report
Dang, wrong on the internet again… at least we wrapped it up before supper so no-one has to lose sleep over it.Report
Gnostic economics.Report
I call bullshit on the defense of the Salvation Army. They are viciously homophobic and trasphobic. They are politically active and work to undermine the dignity of LGBT people across.
Honestly, it offends me, the way people try package hatred as if it were love. It’s not. It’s hate. Furthermore, it undermines faith. It undermines religion, to claim the love of Christ while major organizations double down on hatred. It’s rotten on the inside. You can see it in the doublespeak.
Are you a Christian organization? You want to double your fundraising efforts? Easy peasy: preach hate. Preach fear. Spread lies about LGBT people. Demonize us. The money will pour in.
Bullshit. Let go of the bigotry. Just stop. It’s poisoning your souls.Report
You’re entirely welcome to not buy food at Chick-Fil-A, to tell everyone you know to not buy food at Chick-Fil-A, and to make “bought food at Chick-Fil-A” another line in the increasingly-long list of purity tests you insist people pass.
It isn’t “defending the Salvation Army” to point out that eventually you’ll be bound up in a nutshell counting yourself king of infinite space. But, y’know, infinite space that contains nothing bad is what some people need, or it’s what they think they need, which can be the same thing if you try hard enough.Report
The Salvation Army just lost a major corporate donor, very probably because of what folks on veronica’s side of the aisle think.
Maybe they’ll make it up elsewhere. Maybe they won’t.
But it’s not at all obvious that it’s veronica who is going to wind up entirely alone on account of her list of purity tests.Report
I do not live anywhere CFA has a strong presence, and I avoid fast food for health reasons, so while I’ve never set foot in a CFA, I can’t call that a boycott. However, given this, from the Wikipedia entry for former president of CFA Dan Cathy:
I probably would.
I do not want my money winding up in the coffers of people trying to stop SSM politically. I do not want it supporting gay conversion. This is less about the Salvation Army, or even the FCA.Report
Good point. All this started when CFA was fighting SSM and anybody who supports conversion therapy will not get one cent of mine. This is less about SalArm then the issues when CFA became as issue.Report
“Since when did the Salvation Army become anti-gay? They don’t turn away gay people in need. They don’t spend money on lobbyists to fight gay marriage.”
You made me look. I googled on “is the Salvation Army anti-gay” and came up with a FAQ from the Indiana Salvation Army branch. https://centralusa.salvationarmy.org/indiana/faq/
In answer to “Does The Salvation Army turn people away from its center because that person was gay or lesbian?” we get “Any such incident is in clear opposition to all established Salvation Army policy.” In other words, yes, it has happened. No, it wasn’t supposed to, but it says something about the culture. I wonder if the people who did this are still employed by the organization? We aren’t told.
Next is “Does The Salvation Army actively lobby the federal government in ways that promote discrimination against LGBT people?” Ooh! Ooh! I see the loophole. Is the next question about lobbying on the state or local level? Oddly, no. This is left discreetly unaddressed.
And so on. My favorite is the last one: “In 2012, Did a Salvation Army officer in Australia suggest in a radio interview that the Army’s theology calls for gays and lesbians to be put to death?” To which we get the response “It is, of course, ludicrous to think that The Salvation Army believes or teaches anything close to what was suggested in that interview.” In other words, yes. Exactly this happened. Again, we are not informed if this misguided sole is still a Salvation Army officer. I wonder why not? Neither is there any discussion about why all these employees seem compelled to do these things.
We used to eat at Chik-fil-A, because it does in fact serve really good fast food. We stopped because my eleven-year-old got wind of their anti-gay politics and put her foot down. It is an odd parental experience to be shamed by your child, knowing that she is right. She is enthusiastic about charitable activities. It being the time of year it is, we are starting to see the Salvation Army outside stores. I will be sure to educate her on the topic.Report
broke: you’re cherry-picking, you’re taking remarks out of context, you’re ascribing the inappropriate actions of an individual to the organization as a whole which is obviously stupid!
woke: “In 2012, Did a Salvation Army officer in Australia suggest in a radio interview that the Army’s theology calls for gays and lesbians to be put to death?” To which we get the response “It is, of course, ludicrous to think that The Salvation Army believes or teaches anything close to what was suggested in that interview.” In other words, yes. Exactly this happened.Report
It was a FAQ with them wording the “frequently asked” questions any way they wanted. Did this thing described in the question happen? Yes, it did. That is the actual answer to the actual question. Yet they can’t manage to actually give the actual answer to the actual question. Add the context and clarification after the answer. It makes one appear less weaselly.
Oh, and you seem to have inadvertently deleted my musing about whether or not this person is still with the organization. I statement that he is not would go a long ways toward making this look more like a rogue employee than someone whose mistake was stating out loud the bits that the organization prefers be kept quiet.Report
It takes a lot to interpret “Any such incident is in clear opposition to all established Salvation Army policy” as active support for homophobia but I guess you’re willing to do that work.Report
Consumption has been irrevocably tied to self identity for decades easily and really well over a hundred years. This isn’t as much about capitalism since i’m sure it happened in socialist or authoritarian states. What we wear or consume is a part of who we are. Not this aspect of people has gone threw the roof in the last few decades due to modern marketing and most especially computers/intertoobz that can micro track what we do and target market us. Certainly food places, or anything else, that wants you to think you are a good kind of person for eating there runs the risk of alienating people who don’t fit that group. But what places don’t sell a lifestyle or play on deeply held emotions or desires to sell stuff. CFA is no different in that aspect.
The only answer is to chill and let people consume, or not consume, whatever they sporking want. Getting all upset isn’t going to change anything and only adds fuel to the fire.Report
Well. The issue isn’t really about eating or not eating at Chik-Fil-A. The issue is about do we associate with people who eat there.
Like, this isn’t about someone not eating at CFA, this is about someone being a horrible shitty bitch to her up-until-that-instant friend who said “yeah I eat there it’s pretty good”, about having a vicious public blowup and cutting them out of her life, about going home and soothing herself by saying that CFA is homophobic-adjacent and therefore she was the good person in that whole thing.Report
How is that all that different from shunning someone for leaving the church they have always belonged to or for getting a divorce. I’ve known this to happen to many people. Or more obviously disowning someone for coming out as gay.
I’m not for getting up in people’s grill for their consumption habits but some will always do that. I dont’ get gas from Exxon due to the big oil spill decades ago but if someone wants to put an otter in their tank that is their deal. I’d prefer if people chill out, but some people are always going to intense about it ex: football, movies, etc.Report
“How is that all that different from shunning someone for leaving the church they have always belonged to or for getting a divorce.(sic)”
It isn’t.
Are these good things, useful things, behaviors we want to emulate? The example we should follow when we ask what Moral Behavior looks like?Report
I directly said i’m not into that kind of thing and i would prefer if people chilled out. So no , i don’t like that kind of thing. But it is a thing lots of people have done and the fact that i don’t like it isn’t going to change it. Nor is it some new things the evillll libs just started to do. You want to stop it, then calling out all examples are the the way to go, not just focusing on the group you don’t like who does it.Report
How is that all that different from shunning someone for leaving the church they have always belonged to or for getting a divorce.
OH MY FREAKING GOSH YOU ARE SO CLOSEReport
Ummm yeah….whatevs. I try to be clear in what i say. You could also emulate that.Report
How’s this:
“Yes. They are nigh-identical. Arguing in defense of one because the other exists to someone who thinks that they are both wrong is unlikely to move the needle. The fact that you see the one as a problem in a community should give you insight as to why someone else should see the other as a problem in a community.”Report
Did i defend either. I said i dont’ like getting in peoples face about their consumption and also that i, and pretty much everybody, chooses what to consume based on a lot of things. I don’t gas up at Exxon when i’m in the lower 48. So. Everybody makes choices, dont’ get in peoples face about them, but feel free to make your choices as you see fit.
I’m also not trying to move any needles, just saying my piece.Report
Most of the time DD is just:
“There is a rake there, you can step on it, but it’s likely to hurt.”
“I know it’s your rake but..”
“Damn, that looks like it hurt, let me tell ya again, there is a rake there.”Report
I am, thankfully, too young to have experienced a terribly large amount of anti-LGBT animus first hand. Having moved to the US in 2000 the majority of anti-LGBT anything I ever suffered was the standard anxiety that any young person has around their sexuality leavened with the additional angst that the general mood of homosexuality being a lesser orientation saddled LGBTs with.
But that doesn’t mean I was unaware of the vitriol that society, with conservative Christians chief and most passionately in the lead of, poured out on sexual minorities. I know people who worked at shelters, LGBT businesses and LGBT advocacy organizations who described in lurid detail the torrents of abuse, threats and destruction they suffered. LGBT children as young as their early teens were driven from their homes for much of the 1900’s and exiled to live in the cities. During the Aids crisis the relatives of dead LGBT people would swoop in and throw their grieving partners out on the streets as they plundered their dead and reviled child’s estate. And this is without even speaking of how any LGBT persons career or housing could be stripped from them if their orientation became publicly known and without even touching on the physical assault many LGBT people suffered (and in some places still suffer). This is without even talking about how government itself was employed by these same social conservatives to pour out ruin on LGBT persons. Even social conservatives today; finally feeling the worm turning beneath their feet; admit that their past behavior was terrible.
What is so very rich, perhaps dangerously rich, is the braying squalls that social conservatives emit on feeling the touch of just the slightest shadow of the suffering they visited on LGBT people turned on them. Not government or police action against them, no. Not physical violence or mass persecution, nuh-uh. Just people on the internet saying mean things about them and declining to give businesses and organizations that champion those causes their money. The horror. The horror!
Now I do think, and advocate, that the greatest triumph LGBT people can claim over our former oppressors is to seize the flail from their weakening grasp and then DECLINE to do to conservative Christians what they did to us. That is what social Christians shiver in terror at the prospect of: not an LGBT mob beating down their church doors (Christianity is built from the bones up to endure and smile at such persecution) but rather the sound of dust settling on empty pews as LGBT and everyone else goes about their lives and ignores social conservative Christians. So I do view LGBT organizations going after social conservative Christians negatively but this is just declining to support them with ones own funds and publicly criticizing them. That is nothing. Nothing.
And finally there’s the line from Social Conservatives “We’ve given LGBT people what they want on social equality, so why won’t they compromise?” It is bullshit. LGBT people were given NOTHING; they wrenched their victories one after another over the desperate opposition of social conservatives through the hard work of persuasion, lobbying, legislation and lawsuits. Even as they are lying feeble on the ground, trampled by the stampede of the social sea change and whining about what they “gave” lgbt’s social conservatives still persist in feebly grasping to turn the clock back. Dreher will reluctantly mention, on occasion, that LGBT people were treated poorly in the past but he didn’t support SSM then and if he had the power to do so he’d ban it now. Compromise and conciliation happens after both sides stop trying to destroy each other. There’s been no surrender offered by social conservatives, no compromise. They just want to keep trying to turn the clock back AND also not be criticized, boycotted or looked down on for doing so.
You want compromise? Fine. Then ya gotta offer something in return. Social conservatives constantly try this dance “How about you settle for half of what you seek and we’ll settle for trying to take that half away from you”. That ain’t how it works. If social conservatives were to abandon trying to turn social policy on LGBT people back to the 50’s through their politics, churches and businesses then the fragment of LGBT extremists who’d keep trying to ban churches, religious schools or social conservative businesses would be utterly tiny and powerless.
But if social conservatives are just going to hop on their remaining leg like the Black Knight from Monty Python alternating claims of it just being a flesh wound with head-butting LGBT people and calling them names? Well who knows what will happen then.Report
This. This. This. It encapsulates what I mentioned but further discusses why I’m simply just uninterested in ‘compromise’.Report
No matter how much you love capitalism, it will never love you back.Report
QFTReport
There’s actually almost no evidence the NFL ratings decline was actually over kneeling, but rather most of the decline was due to some really bad Thursday night games impacting an stagnant trend.
But anyway, putting that aside, the actual likely reason why CFA is expanding is what was pointed out – expansion to new markets. Yes, people in Chicago or even Seattle might eat chicken even if it’s going to anti-gay orgs, but in someplace like London, that’s much more of a no-go.Report
A while back, in a post about non-profits, I mentioned that religious-based non-profits, while perhaps the most numerous, often do really really REALLY bad jobs at charity and helping people, mostly because religious groups are very bad at picking staff and policing them, usually they just let whoever seems somewhat pious and concerned about the problem run it without any oversight.
THE example of this is the Salvation Army.
An interesting fact about the Salvation Army: It isn’t ‘supposed to be’ homophobic. Transphobic, probably, but not homophobic. It basically is homophobic because it is horrifically mismanaged.
As in, they fail to create policies for local leaders to follow, they do not in any way monitor local situations, they are complete and utter failures as people running a charity. For example, there’s many documented instances of Salvation Army branches that regularly steal possession from people staying with them. Not as a one-time thing or a single bad group.
And managers often steal donations, too. Not just money but stuff like toys donated for kids. Here:
https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2017/04/26/salvation-army-executive-guilty-of-massive-toy-for-profit-fraud.html
There’s one that actually got caught, one high enough that he came to the attention of the police. But…locally it happens all the time, there’s tons of stories of local managers just wandering into the donations and picking up things they like and taking them for themselves.
This is because, the Salvation Army, as non-profit corporation, is horrifically, utterly, completely mismanaged.
It’s also how they end up getting bigots in there…it’s not the leadership not just taking a firm stance against that, it’s that the leadership doesn’t take firm stance, doesn’t enforced policies, at all. It’s why they keep having these horror stories, keep ending in the press because they refused to let in a family because they had a teenage son (Yes, really.), or kick out people who tweet about bad conditions (Yes, really)…and they also get bigoted managers in there who are homophobic or transphobic and who feel free to express that, because they have, literally, no accountability or training or anything.
…and, of course, as in any organization that is horrifically mismanaged and lets people do whatever they want…there’s also plenty of sexual abuse in their history. Just ask Australia, where they ran children homes.
The Salvation Army is a complete and utter shitshow, as a non-profit, from top to bottom. Asking questions about the top level, about what the organization ‘believes’, is nonsense, because ‘policy from the top’ has no bearing on anything. It’s just a bunch of unaccountable shitty local managers. Usually religious fanatics.
The idea that any corporation donates to them is…rather an indication of their priorities. Or their stupidity.
Hell, even if they 100% agree with literally everything the Salvation Army stands for, they still shouldn’t support it! There are homophobic and transphobic charities that are those things as _policy_, and are competently run. I mean, I wouldn’t donate to them, but…they exist. If you donate to the Salvation Army, you’re either ignorant, or…trying to make some statement about evangelical religion, or something, I don’t even know. I get why random people on the street donate to them, they don’t know these things, but you would think corporations would do actual research into this.
…or maybe they have, but just want to make a statement about how religious-ish they are. It’s like Jesus said: “So when you give to the needy, announce it loudly with trumpets, to be honored by others.” -Matthew 6:2, probably.Report
“you should not donate tp that charity because it is horribly mismanaged” still leaves room to donate to homophobic bigots tho, so, good luck pushing that messageReport
I was just trying to point out that a lot of the criticism of the Salvation Army is weirdly misplaced, and seems to gloss over the fact that…the Salvation Army leadership isn’t responsible for any of that misbehavior, the attention-grabbing headlines of horrible behavior by local chapter. This is because the Salvation Army leadership are utterly irresponsible in every possible way.
And this is…trivial to figure out, too. It’s not some secret. Other charities don’t have anywhere near the amount of problems or bad PR from local branches! Even openly religious charities don’t act like this.
Thinking about this, support for the the Salvation Army might be the charitable giving version of the ‘Crazification factor’. Just like 27% of the population will vote for a total damn lunatic if they have a R after their name, some level of the population will support a functionally incompetent charity if it sounds ‘Christian’ enough.
And…as to your point: While I don’t actually want people to donate to well-run homophobic charities, I suspect that most people donating to the Salvation Army are doing so sorta by default, and if they learn not to do that due to incompetence, they’ll probably migrate to some other large charity, like Habitat for Humanity or something…and almost none of the large ones are homophobic, that I know of. (Like I said, the Salvation Army isn’t even technically homophobic…they’re just very very bad at what they do.)
Likewise, telling people about this can help inform retail spaces to get the Salvation Army people out of there, which in turn allows them to be replaced with good charities….which probably won’t be homophobic.Report
“While I don’t actually want people to donate to well-run homophobic charities, I suspect that most people donating to the Salvation Army are doing so sorta by default, and if they learn not to do that due to incompetence, they’ll probably migrate to some other large charity, like Habitat for Humanity or something…”
Which is entirely valid, but they aren’t Not Donating Because Homophobia, they’re Not Donating Because Inefficient, and for some people it’s reeeeeally important that you Not Donate Because Homophobia.
Like, the people cheering for CFA dropping overt donations to SA aren’t doing it from an excess of utilitarian glee, they aren’t saying “thank random fluctuations in spacetime we’ve reduced the overhead loss from forty-six percent to thirty-two!”
And if your concern is “the Salvation Army is bad at being a charity!”, well, there’s more than one solution to that problem.Report
When I was a little kid in the 80s, we (well, my mom) volunteered a lot at The Salvation Army (my sister and I got dragged along). We did a lot of Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas dinners for the homeless.
The setup was simple. A whole bunch of folding tables and folding chairs in a basketball court. A lady who played the accordion at the front, we sang two hymns, then everybody got fed. We sang one last hymn, there were some statements about AA meetings (and other recovery workshops) available and when and then everybody left.
I got the idea that the bums and drunks that we fed had a lot of hard mileage and half of them would be dead before next year’s Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner… making this probably the last semi-decent meal they were ever going to eat.
“Stay in school” was the lesson I got. “Don’t fall into the bottle” was another.Report
I have nothing to add to the conversation but just wanted to say, great piece, Merrie. I really enjoy your writing!Report
Thank you!Report
My sense is that this is a good direction for them in the long run — they have a popular product and a good reputation for customer service, so they’ll be better off not losing business purely due to identification with a political issue, especially an issue where they’re pretty clearly on the losing side going forward. A short-term dip wouldn’t be surprising as they lose some partisans on the right while not yet having shed the resistance from the left, but eventually they should see some good gains in blue state territory (and overseas equivalents).Report
People deciding not to patronize CFA because it donates to anti-LGBT causes — politics, dammit, can’t I just eat my chicken in peace! CFA donating to anti-LGBT causes — ?Report
Not sure I understand your comment, or what it has to do with my comment about the business strategy.Report
Formatting error. It wasn’t supposed to be a reply to your comment.Report
I give to Salvation Army. I am not a Christian, but it looks like they do a good job feeding the hungry and providing shelter. So who should I be giving a couple hundred bucks to instead? SA is pretty mainstream and is changing with the times.
Also, I owe Burt $100 from 2016. How do I pay?Report
They don’t. I mean, yes, it ‘looks like’ they do, but they are actually very bad at what they do. At least at the top. Locally…it’s a complete crapshoot. I’m sure some local Salvation Army shelters are great, run by great people! But others are the opposite, run by horrible bigoted people. And the organization as a whole has no idea how to manage local branches or enforce policy or anything.
If you want to focus on national organizations that deal with homelessness, Covenant House is your best bet. They focus on youth homeless, and explicitly support LGBT youth. I’m not saying they’re perfect, but they’re way better than the Salvation Army.
There’s also Coalition for the Homeless, which I don’t know much about but runs shelters for adults and is well rated, and Habitat for Humanity, which is taking a different approach.
If I, personally, was going to donate in that direction, I’d think I’d go with National Alliance to End Homelessness which doesn’t try to house homeless people at all…it tries to get governments, Federal, state, and local, to get off their asses and do something about homelessness, which seems a lot more sustainable to me.Report
This is a good comment.
One of the things I noticed volunteering at the Salvation Army is how much of an uphill climb they have.
The people they’re trying to help are people who aren’t easy to help.
It’s easy to give someone a meal, though. Maybe a bunk. That’s, what… 12 hours worth of help? And they’re going to need that help again in 12 hours.Report
One of the issues that will effect all homeless and various other outreach organizations is that many of the staff became involved with it because they used to be clients. Virtually all the staff and day-to-day management of our city’s homeless shelter are former residents of the shelter, which is summed up by the residents as “the inmates are running the asylum”. Another issue is that those who come from outside the system might be, in some regards, crazier than those former inmates, and certainly less experienced with their actual needs and problems.Report
I don’t doubt it. Most non-profits are operated by people who sorta ‘came up’ in that non-profit, or one like it. This is because people who have benefited from a certain type of non-profit are the people most likely to see that as important and worth their time.
When the non-profit is something like a homeless shelter, which help a lot of people with various problems of drug addition and mental illness, it can requires good leadership to teach them.
As opposed to when the non-profit is a symphony orchestra or a literacy program, which presumably just end up being run by people who like music (Duh.) and…people who used to not be able to read? Huh, not sure if that works for that example.
Especially when it’s something like the Salvation Army, which is overtly an evangelical religious organization, so it attracts people who solely want to ‘spread the good news’ instead of, you know, actually helping the homeless the best they can. And in turn, those people hire more people like them, and before you know it, the entire local branch is run by incompetents who know nothing about nothing and have brought a bunch of halfbaked ideas and prejudices with them, and are ready to run out there and give all the homeless as much Jesus as possible, woooo!Report
I always try to make a distinction between my political donations and my almsgiving. I do both to improve society, but there’s something creepy that happens when you start to blur them.Report
It’s not just political donations to try to influence opinion. A lot of it is advising local governments _how_ to do things. Or helping charities expand. Fighting laws that hinder homeless shelters.
Homelessness isn’t really a problem of resources. A very large aspect of the problem is communities that try to outlaw it, or don’t know how to deal with it at all. The National Alliance to End Homelessness comes in and fights the first and shows them how to do the second.
Here’s the thing: Without people arguing for the rights of the homeless…the homeless end up with literally no rights. They are the most powerless people in society. In lots of places, it’s basically impossible for them to vote. It’s also nearly impossible for them to even exist without breaking the law, which means…they can’t actually do any political activism without risking their freedom.
And with literally no rights, politically pressure soon shows up and _closes homeless shelters down_. It drives the homeless off the streets and out of parks, into back alleys and woods and kills them.
You can’t just donate towards shelters and meals, or you will find that, one day, they aren’t allowed to operate the shelter or provide meals anymore because of zoning or something. Or all the homeless moved to San Francisco because your local government continued to harass them…and then starved to death, because San Francisco can’t handle that number of homeless.
It’s sorta like abortion, honestly. It doesn’t matter how much you donate to the organizations helping provide it to poor communities it if the political system itself _decides it’s not allowed to exist_. At some point, the political question is ‘Is this charity allowed to exist’, which means you can’t stick your head in the sand and pretend the political aspect doesn’t exist.Report
One of the things that gets overlooked about homelessness, is that they don’t just arise up out of the pavement in major cities.
In almost all cases they were born and raised where everyone else was, in the suburbs and rural areas and small towns.
It was only when they developed,whatever problem they have that makes them homeless, they head to the big cities because their community of origin doesn’t have enough resources to accommodate them.Report
Related, at least in my state, the high-population more-urban counties have much higher occurrences of people with various disabilities that are covered by Medicaid. Some amount of that is the rural counties don’t have services for those problems and people move to where the services are. The situation sometimes feeds into the homeless population.Report
Yeah, that. Also…San Francisco and Los Angeles have a particular attraction that it almost never gets below freezing. The average low in the coldest month (December) is around 47.
And…San Francisco actually has a sort of inbuilt homeless problem, being very dense and crowded in awkwardly, so housing inherently costs more, and demand has skyrocketed recently.
Whereas LA is…well, a bit more spread out, so housing is logically better, but it still has the largest stable homeless populations in the US, on Skid Row.
Incidentally, LA is under a consent degree to keep the police from harassing the homeless with extremely restrictive rules. Speaking of the need for organizations like the National Alliance to End Homelessness. (Although that lawsuit was the ACLU.)
The courts ruled ‘the LAPD cannot arrest people for sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks in Skid Row.’ Which…like, yeah. How dare people use a sidewalk horizontally! If they don’t own or rent some private property to go to, they are required to…stand forever. I guess. Hmm. I don’t think the government can legally require people to do things that are physically impossible.Report
Nearly half of the homeless are in California. Are you saying people from the other 50 states (suburbs and rural areas) just happen to find themselves homeless in Cali? Maybe cite something, as this sounds more of a liberal wish than a fact.Report
Until very recently, like the last 10 years, there were virtually no people living in the urban core of Los Angeles.
Now the urban core has tens of thousands of homeless.
Where did they come from? Not the urban core, because no one was born and raised here.
They came from all the outlying areas.
Here is some more reading:
http://www.evidenceonhomelessness.com/recent_highlights/where-do-homeless-come-from/Report
Not much rural mentioned there, It does mention neighbor hoods with low rents being the feeders.
I guess that’s a pretty good place to start, because if your already at the lowest rent, a marginal drop in income/wealth creates the homelessness.
What are your thoughts about California, do you see a lot of people not able to claw onto the lowest rents rung and fall into homelessness?Report
Like any large problem, homelessness has a lot of causes and variables.
You can probably sort homeless people into several big categories;
One is the category which is invisible; The people profiled in Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary “Motel Kids” about working people who live in motels or garages or cars because although they work, they just can’t scrape together enough cash for first and last;
The other big category is the visible homeless, the people we see on the street. Most often these are the addicts and mentally ill.
There is an affordability crisis in the gap between rents and wages. The places where the entry level jobs are, are precisely the places where the rents are high.
When you walk through downtown and see all the service workers- the fast food workers, retail clerks, janitorial staff- none of them can afford to live downtown. They all commute in from the lower rent suburbs far away.
For that matter- I asked one of the engineers I work with, how many of his employees can afford to rent the apartment buildings they design. Only the top sliver, he told me.
Remember, these are all white collar professionals, college STEM graduates we are talking about.Report
Do you think the Central Business District model is even sustainable, if this is the case?
The larger the population center, the farther the travel is to affordable rents for the bottom of the rung (or even middle rung).Report
Actually, I was thinking about it from the other side of the abortion debate. I try to contribute to pro-life candidates and also support crisis pregnancy centers.Report
You come to Portland, and I’ll collect by way of your picking up the tab when we drink.Report
@fortytwo and anyone else who is interested:
The reason I don’t give to the Salvation Army is that a) they don’t do a good job, as discussed elsewhere, in these threads, b) they’ve spent significant money in the recent past (this century, late last century) supporting campaigns to keep homosexuality illegal in countries where that law is still being actively enforced by lengthy jail sentences, torture, and execution (and when they don’t spend it directly they donate to “charities” in those countries who spend on that same goal).
Given that history of literally helping oppressive regimes to murder people for being gay, I strongly encourage people to shift their donations to supporting orgs that focus on LGBTQ homeless youth. You can find a state by state list here that spells out which orgs are homeless: (pdf) , and Lambda Legal seems – from my quick skim of the list, to have done a really good job in focusing on quality orgs, though there are *so many* of these orgs, all struggling for funding, nationwide, that not every excellent organization I’ve heard of made the list.
From my own personal research and second-hand reports of people I know who’ve been homeless, my top three for donations are:
The Place (https://theplacecos.org/) – this is in the city where I live and while they don’t require kids to choose a sexual orientation to live there – which, is, uh, preferable by my way of thinking actually – they work closely with our local LGBTQ youth center since, as also mentioned upthread, there are still lots and lots of LGBTQ homeless kids, way disproportionate b/c of getting kicked out by parents. They’re a joint effort of a lot of different orgs in the city, both Christian and not, who’ve all agreed to keep political efforts to one side when it comes to giving kids a better shot at life.
Outside In (https://outsidein.org/) In Portland OR. Portland has the most homeless people because it gives the most care – health services, help with finding homes, help getting into stable situations, food and shelter – to homeless people of any city in the US. Or, at least, it has that rep as a city? Which means homeless people from all over the country have started flocking there since 2016, and it’s *flooded*. The orgs there are really great but cannot keep up with demand. The one I’m specifically citing is one I know has helped multiple internet friends of mine over the years, and gone ‘above and beyond’ in ways that impressed me.
Ali Forney Center (https://www.aliforneycenter.org/) – NYC has a ton of homeless folks and especially a ton of homeless kids. The homeless kids are … about 40 percent QUILTBAG kids, as in 40 percent self-identify that way… I’d guess the number could be higher than 40 percent, honestly. Ali Forney Center is another place that helps a ton of people and does a good job thereby, enough so that I’ve heard people I know (including a couple of kids here at my swank liberal arts college!) talk about how much it turned their lives around from being on the street to where they are now.
So those would be my suggestions. All places I’ve actually donated to in the past. The Salvation Army is unlikely to do the best job of sharing on your money to places where you want it shared, even if the local branch is doing the best they can with what they get to keep (which is, honestly, not reliably the case…)Report
Thanks for this, Maribou. I haven’t done the research you have, but I trust your assessment of Salvation Army (because I trust you). For reasons I can’t/won’t go into, whether to donate to the Salvation Army kind of a live issue with me.Report
Happy to help.
In the interest of full disclosure, and in case it’s relevant to your situation (but far less importantly than what I’ve said above), I have a separate grudge against them (irrelevant to this issue) because the local branch accepted a large real estate donation from the owner of a building I was working in, and then quickly a) raised the rent my boss (the business, not building, owner) was paying beyond the tenable, and b) sold to somewhat shady developers who then kicked us out as quickly as they could.
One would have thought that an org purportedly dedicated to helping the low- and no-income wouldn’t have been in *quite* such a hurry to remove the incomes of several low wage earners (some of whom had been working in that location for 20 years) and then send a previously functioning small business owner down the trail toward bankruptcy. One *would* have thought.
Sigh.
My work situation for the last decade has mostly been fabulous, so I don’t still have all *that* much of a grudge about that, in fact I didn’t even remember it until something you said – “live issue” maybe – tweaked me and moved it back top of mind.
But the reasons for disliking them are broad.
One of my job-lost coworkers almost ended up homeless themself :(.Report
Ah, there’s the confusion. The goal of the Salvation Army is not to help the low- and no-income people.
We see the order of that? ‘Meet human needs’ is literally last. (Well, ‘without discrimination’ is literally last. Heh.) And they don’t say they want to help people out of poverty, or help keep them out of poverty. Just ‘meet human needs’.
They literally say they just want to preach to the poor, and keep them from starving/freezing to death. That’s all they say they’re trying to do.
In fact, someone else, someone who is uncharitable (pun intended) towards them, might point out that the Salvation Army’s method of forcing preaching onto the poor before aiding them works better the more people are reliant on what the Salvation Army provides, and thus they have an incentive to…make people poor. I’m not…saying that…but…some people could.Report
Come on. You’re implying that the Salvation Army drives people into poverty so they can lure them in with promises of food and preach to them? It’s a week before Thanksgiving and we’re trash-talking a Christian charity that does a massive outreach for the poor, because they’re not pro-gay enough?Report
A quick Google showed that Salvation Army distributes 82 cents on the dollar to services for the hungry, homeless, disabled and elderly. I could find no data on how many bibles were purchased or how many conversions were extorted from the desperate.Report
Charity ratings organization usually won’t rate the Salvation Army. At least not the pieces of it that people think about. This is because the Salvation Army is a church, not a charity. The IRS considers the entire Salvation Army to be a church, so no parts of it are require to file the IRS Form 990 that other charities have to. So figuring out their finances is very difficult.
The national organization did eventually get shamed into filing those forms, starting two decades ago I think, and I think it was they were getting called out for that on the charity rating sites. But local organizations, where most of the money is, almost entirely refuse. They are a church, and churches don’t have to do it.
You can find charity ratings that do rate the ‘Salvation Army’, but it’s the national organization they are talking about. (And a few pieces the national organization operates directly.) This is…not what people think of when they think of the Salvation Army. They think of the homeless shelter run by the local chapter, a different organization, on which there’s probably no financial information available.Report
Actually I wasn’t, I was just pointing that, according to how they operate, they are better off the more people are poor. And that some people, who notice the many many things they do that actually hurt the poor (Insert many examples here), could get suspicious.
For the record, I’m not suspicious, because I’m 100% sure the reason they often hurt the poor is they utterly mismanaged at the top and local branches are often run by idiots.
So let me just make that clear, because people decided to take my joke conspiracy seriously.
No, actually I wasn’t trash talking a Christian charity. The Salvation Army isn’t a charity! They don’t even say they’re one. I literally quoted right above.
They say they’re a church. ‘an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church’.
People just mistake them for a charity because churches usually don’t wandering around asking for donations from non-believers. It’s considered a bit crass.Report
Yea this is really one of the dumber comments I’ve seen. They have an agenda and their help is to some degree contingent on listening to the pitch, maybe mouthing agreement to their code. No one needs to support them, their methods, or other entities that do, and this observation is utterly unremarkable.
But the idea that they want people to be poor and vulnerable for conversion? Talk about your evidence free assertions.Report
From the Babylon Bee, America’s newspaper of record:
Ellie Goulding Scolds Homeless Man For Accepting Charity From Salvation ArmyReport
Yes, and I’m informing people _of_ said methods, so people decide _to_ support them or _not_.
What is your problem with this?
No, I’m sure they actually only do that out of utter carelessness, just like they have a history of kicking homeless people out of their own unoccupied property.
https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/weekend-rewind-police-help-clear-homeless-camping-in-port-angeles-salvation-army-parking-lot/
I would like to apologize in hinting that they had sort of moral rationale for this sort of behavior. They’re just idiots who don’t care about poor people.
Incidentally, people, read that article carefully, a few of you are going to trip the word ‘weapons’ and go ‘Oh, of course they were kicked out’. Except…they had weapons because the community was attacking them with eggs and yelling at them as they drove by.
For camping. In Salvation Army parking lot. And the Salvation Army…said, “Well, we can’t have this, the homeless people gotta go.”.
This is…not a singular instance.Report
I doubt that any religion prefers that people be poor but…
“When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. ”
Dom Helder Camara
Most religions are very good at helping the poor individuals, but weak on structural injustice that is the driver of poverty.Report
Biological creatures requiring nutrition to survive is one of the best arguments against Utopias being possible.
Which is why we have to start seriously considering Human Virtualization.Report