The Giving Season

            We all have our faults. Goodness knows I have my share. Even my lovely wife has some. Well, at least one: she’s a hoarder. She just finds it near impossible to get rid of stuff. Our attic, closets, storage cabinets, and our spare room are full of old, obsolete, and useless things. So, it has become a sort of ritual when my daughter Danielle visits from Tucson that something is going to get cleaned out.

            This year Danielle attacked her mother’s closet, which was bulging with clothes that had not been worn since we moved to North Carolina 16 years ago. “Mom, you don’t need all the winter clothing you wore in Michigan. And you can’t possibly wear clothes you wore when you were a size 6.” Ignoring the loud and painful protests from her mother, Danielle created a four-foot pile of blouses, slacks, sweaters, and coats on the bed. The culling complete, I was ordered to take the huge inventory to the Salvation Army in Elizabeth City.

            Over the years we have rung the bell at the Salvation Army’s back door to drop off things we didn’t need anymore: tools, small appliances, household items, books, even a couple of bicycles, knowing somebody would make good use of them. To our minds, the Salvation Army is one of the finest charitable organizations on the planet.

            The Salvation Army accepts donations of all kinds, and that includes money. Hertford’s Albemarle Plantation has a fine Christmas tradition in which residents do not send Christmas cards to each other, but instead place a single card on the Clubhouse Christmas tree with a donation to the Salvation Army.

            And then we have the Salvation Army’s volunteer bell ringers and their Christmas Kettle Drive. But spare change is not enough. The organization relies on corporate donors a well. It came as a surprise, then, to learn that Chick-fil-A has decided to discontinue donations to the Salvation Army in response to pressure from LGBTQ activists who claim that the organization discriminates against them. This is a baseless and vile calumny that masks the LGBTQ community’s antipathy for Christian charities, because Christian tradition opposes same sex marriage. The fact is that the Salvation Army serves the poor, irrespective of their sexual orientation.

            To add insult to injury, Chick-fil-A has made a donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an extreme leftist organization that consistently spews hatred for conservatives and Christians. The reaction has been swift: Chick-fil-A is getting an earful from its customers, especially Evangelicals who were the first to show support for the popular restaurant when the left called for a boycott. These same customers now feel betrayed.

            Christians may oppose same sex marriage, but they do not hate gay people. The problem is with anti-religious activists who cannot tolerate religious believers and seek to destroy them because they don’t agree with their agenda.

            I think it’s time for Danielle to come visit us again.