Gay-Rights Groups Urging a Boycott of Contributions to the Salvation Army

[Stephen Thomas]

These people are pests. I know I'm not the world's best dresser but five times this week they've stopped me in the High St and offered me a shelter.

Robert, you can be so FUNNY.

[Robert]

I wouldn't mind, Stephen, but when I did go along to get a free bowl of soup (waste not, want not) they asked me if I was gay, When I said I wasn't they told me they were rebalancing their work and I could only come in if I was gay. I had to dye my hair mauve to get in there.

[Ally]

St. Jude is not a religious based charity. It's called St. Jude because he is the patron saint of lost causes, and he was the Patron Saint of the guy who founded it, the actor Danny Thomas. But it isn't Catholic, and it isn't religious.

I am aware of the limits of St. Judes religious affiliations but I don't give to any even vaguely religious organizations and a religious founder who names his charity after a religious icon is sufficiently religious to me. He could have called it Judes if he didn't want the religious tone. He didn't. Just like I am sure if I decided to call my charity Lucifer's Angels, even if it wasn't affiliated with Satanism, I could expect some sort of lack of support. (Hmm that's actually a pretty good idea for a charity name...)

On the other hand, I don't give at stores either, because I don't consider it an afterthought. For those who do, fine. I also don't know the mechanism under which they turn over the funds. Yoplait had a thing where every pink lid you turned in, they gave $1 to breast cancer research, and they got millions back. They failed to mention that it topped out at $100,000 and since the recycled all the lids, they saved a boatload. After a lawsuit they do now put the limit on the carton in tee tiny letters.

Yep, I am pretty firmly against most of these "drives" and "pink things". I am sure they sell boatloads from cups to keychains to every stupid marketed "we can sell it if we slap a pink ribbon on it" crap and very little of the profit ever goes to the cause.

I forgot the one I used to get the worst looks on, even worse than St. Judes, the annual UNICEF drive at school. You might as well drive down any random crack town and throw fifty cents out the window for all the money that makes it from UNICEF to people in need.

[Roy Corduroy]

Yep, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here :

[Errata]

I am aware of the limits of St. Judes religious affiliations but I don't give to any even vaguely religious organizations and a religious founder who names his charity after a religious icon is sufficiently religious to me. He could have called it Judes if he didn't want the religious tone. He didn't. Just like I am sure if I decided to call my charity Lucifer's Angels, even if it wasn't affiliated with Satanism, I could expect some sort of lack of support. (Hmm that's actually a pretty good idea for a charity name...)

I think it was more statement on the mission of St. Jude than a religious statement. I am 100% certain that St. Jude Children's Hospital has done more for hopeless causes than St. Jude the saint ever did. I don't think Danny Thomas ever did more than donate the money to build and maintain it for a short time, for which I guess you get the privilege of naming it. But then I've worked with them, and I'm a big fan. Of course, how religious can a charity be if it is mostly supported by Hollywood and sports stars?

But I admit to being beaten down somewhat on the whole religious issue. A: We don't have a lot of secular charities here at all, and B: You can only correct little old ladies who thank you by saying "that's very Christian of you" for 15 or so years before you just stop caring. I want to care, or more accurately, I want to want to care. I'm just done. On the other hand, I wholly support a charity being called Lucifer's Angels. Somehow I see the holiday red buckets being manned by burlesque dancers, and really how can that fail?