Is this an example of creating opportunity? The shrubya faith based initiative for social "good,"
quickly perverted to target gays and then expanding into a religious witch hunt?
This is not even about equal marriage rights, these people quickly carried it into the realm of the reilgious intolerance and an even more basic right: to earn one's own daily bread.
Without a blink or any evidence of shame, or self restraint, the rw congealed in a heart beat to take advantage of power and to attack workers on the basis of sexual orientation and/or religious faith.
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http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Berkowitz0316.htm Salvation Army Discriminates
One of Nation's Largest Charities Sued by
Employees for Religious Discrimination
by Bill Berkowitz
www.dissidentvoice.org
March 16, 2004
All is not well with one of the nation's largest charities.
Eighteen current and former employees of the Salvation Army's social services arm have filed suit against the organization, accusing it of
"imposing a religious veil over secular, publicly financed activities like caring for foster children and counseling young people with AIDS," the New York Times reported in late February. "I was harassed to the point where eventually I resigned," said Margaret Geissman, a former human resources manager who told the Times that her superior asked for the religions and sexual orientations of her staff. "As a Christian, I deeply resent the use of discriminatory employment practices in the name of Christianity."
The employees,
"including senior administrators and caseworkers that are Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and nonreligious," filed their lawsuit in United States District Court in Manhattan. They're being represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union and by Martin Garbus, a well-known First Amendment lawyer. At a press conference announcing the suit, Garbus pointed out that it strikes at the heart of the president's faith-based initiative and the separation of church and state. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, added that "It's critical at this stage of the game to put a stop to proselytizing with government money."
According to Reuters, the Salvation Army Greater New York Division receives
$89 million a year in taxpayer money, mostly from the state, New York City and Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. Anne Lown, a plaintiff and an associate director of the Army's children's services agency in New York, said that the charity employs nearly 900 people and provides services for more than 2,000 children.
The Salvation Army is no stranger to controversy revolving around issues related Bush's faith-based initiative.
Six months after the initiative's unveiling in late January 2001, it was revealed that top-level administration officials had been conducting secret meetings with the Salvation Army to enlist its political and financial support for the then-flagging project. According to the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, the meetings, which included
Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, and Don Eberly, the then Deputy Director of the newly opened White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, had been going on for several months.
An internal Salvation Army document indicated that in exchange for its support,
"which included plans for an Army-sponsored $100,000 public relations campaign," the charity would receive assurances that any bill passed by Congress would contain a
provision allowing religious charities to sidestep state and local anti-discrimination measures barring discriminatory hiring practices on the basis of sexual orientation. After the Washington Post's story broke, the administration moved into denial mode, the Salvation Army backtracked, and congressional opponents of the initiative were furious. Salvation ArmyGate was one reason Bush's faith-based initiative languished legislatively on Capitol Hill for more than three years.
In retrospect, it appears that the Salvation Army didn't need any special exemption to discriminate against its employees. According to the New York Times, the
plaintiffs are charging the Salvation Army's New York division of coercing them into "sign forms revealing the churches they had attended over the past 10 years, name their ministers and agree to the Army's mission 'to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'" Some litigants claimed they were let go "after years of working in secular jobs when they objected to signing the forms. Others," the Times reported, "said the new religious focus violated the social workers' ethics code and could have chilling effect on their work... for example, preventing them from giving condoms to people infected with H.I.V. or forbidding abortion counseling."
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http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2006/10/31... /
Salvation Army Lobbies for Religious Discrimination
Filed under Legislation, Religion by Peregrin Wood at 8:33 am
It’s almost time for those red kettles to go up in front of grocery stores across America, and all across America, people get all rosy cheeked just thinking about doing good… forgetting about all the organizations that do as much good without making such a big show about it… without thinking about where the money that goes into the red kettle really goes to.
Among other things, the money people give to the Salvation Army goes to pay the salaries of lobbyists in Washington D.C. What, oh what, do those Salvation Army lobbyists lobby for? The Salvation Army lobbies in favor of the political agenda of the Religious Right.
There’s the time, for example, when the Salvation Army leaders met behind closed doors with the Bush White House to come up with a strategy for passing a law that would allow government-funded groups to fire people for refusing to join the religions of their bosses. Convert and praise Jesus or lose your job, the Salvation Army law said. That was a practice that the Salvation Army was already engaging in, giving religious tests to employees and telling them to take a hike if the responses were not theologically correct, taking government money all the while. The Salvation Army spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of red kettle money on that political project alone.
What else does your red kettle donation pay for? Political organizing against same-sex marriage, for one thing. The Salvation Army uses its organization to promote opposition to equal marriage rights for same sex-sex couples. The web site of the Salvation Army states, “The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life. There is no scriptural support for same-sex unions as equal to, or as an alternative to, heterosexual marriage.” Catch that other part too - the only good homosexual is a homosexual who decides not to have sex for the rest of his or her life.
There’s also the Salvation Army’s
history of rescinding benefits to same-sex domestic partners. Said the Human Rights Campaign, “We’re talking about health care, about providing health benefits, and what the Salvation Army has decided to do is prevent certain families from getting health care, and that’s just mean.” Salvation Army supporters responded to Portland’s request that it adhere to the city’s ordinance requiring organizations receiving money from the city government to provide benefits to same-sex domestic partners by sending hate mail with messages such as “You are a sick person who doesn’t deserve to be mayor.” Compassion?
Still want to put that money in the red kettle?
Consider the Salvation Army’s decision to
put its religion ahead of the needs of homeless people in Wisconsin. When the Janesville City Council asked the Salvation Army to stop trying to convert people to evangelical Christianity with government money provided through the city government, the Salvation Army said no. The Salvation Army decided that it was more important to keep trying to convert people to Christianity than to help people in need, so it decided to stop work on a homeless shelter until the
local government relented and allowed proselytization with government funds. A spokesman said that stopping its religious activities as part of government-funded programs that it administrates would stop the Salvation Army from fulfilling its mission “to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ”. The Salvation Army would let the homeless freeze outside in the Wisconsin winter weather rather than just stop telling people to worship Jesus.
Yes, government funds. The Salvation Army gets a huge amount of praise for helping people in need, but the truth is that
a huge amount of the money that the Salvation Army spends comes directly from federal, state, and local government. We, the taxpayers of America, make the sacrifice, but the Salvation Army gets the credit with none of the oversight and accountability that ordinarily goes along with government programs. In 2005, for example, 95 percent of the
Salvation Army’s budget for children services came from the federal government, and was used, among other things, to conduct an anti-gay witch hunt in which employees were told to look for signs of homosexual activity in their colleagues, and to expose those colleagues so that they could be fired.The plain fact is that the Salvation Army would only conduct a tiny fraction of its charitable works if it did not receive billions of dollars of government money. Much of the red kettle money goes toward building and maintaining Salvation Army churches, like the ones Wrangell, Alaska; Griffin, Georgia; Thomasville, North Carolina; Gilroy, California; Kalispell, Montana; Fort Lauderdale, Florida and countless other places across the USA. When you throw your money into the red kettle, are you thinking about helping people in need or about maintaining the temple in Rochester, New York?
I’m not denying that the Salvation Army does some good things with its own resources, but most of the good work it does is with government resources that could just as easily go to other programs that don’t discriminate, don’t lobby the government, and don’t mix religion with social services. Let the Salvation Army support itself, and rely purely on private donations. If the Salvation Army wants to keep preaching a right wing agenda, then it’s long past time that it get off the government dole.
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