Make no mistake, in post-Obama America, the Salvation Army will be made to submit to the LGBTQ agenda or the Christian charity organization may face total destruction.
An 85-year-old retired teacher and principal has been kicked to the curb in Seattle, banned from a gig of 19 years ringing a bell outside a Nordstrom department store to draw donations to the Salvation Army’s famous red kettle, the Seattle Times reported.
The reason being, according to the retiree, because LGBTQ employees complained that the Salvation Army’s presence made them uncomfortable.
“The best thing I like about Thanksgiving is the next day I go to work,” Dick Clarke told the newspaper.
But this year, Nordstrom told The Salvation Army that it would no longer allow solicitation in front of its doors, the Times reported.
Dick Clarke has raised more than $100,000 for the Salvation Army standing in front of Nordstrom. This year, the corporation told The Salvation Army it would no longer allow solicitation in front of its doors. (via @NinaShapiro)https://t.co/MiAVF5P3Ud
— The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) December 24, 2019
Clarke said he volunteered five days a week, six hours a day and had collected more than $100,000 over the years, but said he was told in a meeting last week with the head of stores Jamie Nordstrom that LGBTQ employees are now uncomfortable with the Salvation Army being there.
Being a Christian charity, the Salvation Army has long been a target of the hard-left LGBTQ community, which not only demands acceptance from religious entities, but a full embrace.
Thrust into the spotlight recently when, ironically, Chick-fil-A announced it would no longer donate to organizations like the Salvation Army, which has been tagged by liberals as anti-LGBTQ, the charity has become more of a victim by another victim — the alphabet people have been targeting Chick-fil-A since the late founder expressed his support for the sanctity of marriage.
After years of bullying and intimation from the LGBTQ community, Chick-fil-A now appears to be in the process of yielding to the mob and threw the Salvation Army under the bus in the process.
And the ramifications are just beginning — more from the Seattle Times:
The city of Seattle, which like King County contracts with The Salvation Army to provide homeless shelters, will next month begin an “equity audit” in response to “concerns expressed by the community that Salvation Army is not a safe place for LBGTQ persons experiencing homelessness,” wrote Jason Johnson, acting director of the city’s Human Services Department, in a letter to Salvation Army officials in early December.
City spokesman Mark Reardon said he does not know if the concerns — raised initially to All Home’s coordinating board, which distributes federal funding for the county’s homelessness response — arose from any specific instances of alleged discrimination. County and All Home officials said they do not know, either.
The Union Journal said the Salvation Army is experiencing consequences other than its red kettles being banned.
“The disdain for the Christian charity isn’t simply effecting bell ringers. Simply earlier than Christmas, a fleet of Salvation Military vans in Kansas Metropolis have been sabotaged, leaving them unable to ship vacation meals and toys for underneath privileged youngsters,” the newspaper reported.
Someone reportedly punched holes in the gas tanks of the vehicles.
The Salvation Army offered Clarke other locations, but the Nordstrom location was convenient for him at his age.
The Salvation Army’s red kettle campaign in the Northwest Division had raised $3.1 million, more than a million less than last year’s total, according to the Times, but the charity noted there were six fewer days year between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
David Hudson, national commander of the Salvation Army, rejects the “anti-LGBTQ” claims.
“Our doors are, and always have been, open to all,” he wrote in an op-ed last month. “We don’t ask anyone their orientation, identity or beliefs, to help ensure that they feel welcome and safe. So while we can’t claim an exact number, we believe by sheer size and access that we are the largest provider of poverty relief for people in the LGBTQ community.”
“Yet because our organization is rooted in faith, a chorus repeatedly rises that insists we are anti-LGBTQ,” Hudson added. “And that refrain is dangerous to the very community we are wrongly accused of rejecting. At minimum, perpetuating rhetoric that vilifies an organization with the reach, housing, programming and resources that we have in place to lift them up is counterintuitive and inefficient. But when that organization depends on the generosity of donors to provide much-needed assistance to so many across all walks of life, it’s devastating.”
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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