We all know some individuals who are so obviously good and kind that we are certain if anyone were to dislike them, that’s all we would need to know about the person. We would immediately assume he or she is a bad person. To hate the manifestly good is a sure sign of being bad. Such is the case regarding the left’s hatred of The Salvation Army. You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate the goodness of the people who run and work for The Salvation Army.
They devote their lives to helping the poorest, the saddest, the loneliest and the most troubled among us — completely irrespective of race, gender, transgender identity, faith or no faith. Their philanthropic efforts serve 130 countries around the globe, and its aid reaches roughly 23 million people annually. While perhaps most famous for its homeless, hunger, and disaster initiatives, the church funds an array of lesser-known services for vulnerable people: hotlines for victims of domestic abuse, after-school programs for at-risk youth, and job-training programs for the mentally ill.
They provide these downtrodden people with not only food and shelter but also human warmth and love. And they offer the people they care for the one thing most likely to get them out of their predicament: meaning. They offer it; they do not coerce it. They do not discriminate in their provision of services, and there is a compendium of examples of LGBT persons who have expressed gratitude for the work that they do
And while the vehicle for this meaning — Christian faith — may not be your faith, so what? It takes a truly narrow-minded person to want to deprive people of meaning just because that meaning is rooted in faith or in a faith other than their own. Yet, leftists — most especially LGBTQ groups, which spread a remarkable amount of hate in the name of “love” — seek to crush The Salvation Army. They threaten and pressure whoever supports The Salvation Army.
“British pop singer Ellie Goulding,” the Wall Street Journal recently reported, “threatened to cancel an appearance at the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving halftime show, which will celebrate the army’s red-kettle campaign, unless it made a ‘pledge or donation to the LGBTQ community.’ She backed down after the Salvation Army assured her it serves needy members of that community.
Most depressing of all, Chick-fil-A, a business owned by a Christian and heretofore run according to Christian principles, caved in to LGBTQ organizations’ pressure and stopped funding The Salvation Army, while it has also donated to a left-wing group that hates the good, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This politically correct culture has lost any semblance of moral clarity to label a group like the Salvation Army as a hate group. When a hurricane hits, the Salvation Army is among the first on the scene to offer help for the hapless victims. The Salvation Army doesn’t discriminate whom they help. They house and feed the down-and-out, including homosexuals and lesbians. And they supply job-training to help them find meaningful employment.
I never thought I’d see the day when The Salvation Army would be hated by a substantial number of Americans or lose the support of a Christian-run business. But given the left’s loathing of virtually all things good — such as America, Israel, traditional Christianity and Judaism, the Boy Scouts, the nuclear family ideal, Thanksgiving and America’s founders — it is not surprising.
One of the great puzzles in contemporary American life is whether there is anything the left could do to make Americans understand how destructive it is. If suppressing free speech at colleges and on the internet, fomenting interracial anger, supporting those who wish to annihilate Israel, allowing (and even encouraging) teenage girls to have their healthy breasts surgically removed if they think they are a boy and trying to crush The Salvation Army don’t do it, probably nothing will.
God bless the Salvation Army. Maybe Chick-fil-A will no longer give to them, but God will provide for this ministry through some other source. But shame on those who would slander the Salvation Army as a “hate group.” Talk about “fake news.”