Dec 19, 2003  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

Gay rights groups continue to target the Salvation Army’s red kettles, hoping to persuade the Christian charity organization to end its anti-gay policies.

For the third consecutive holiday season, gay rights supporters can drop a note of protest into the red kettles in lieu of spare change traditionally intended for the buckets.

“This holiday season I am supporting organizations that do not discriminate in any way against people based on sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason,” reads a voucher created by Soulforce, a national gay rights interfaith group.

“I will not donate to the Salvation Army, and will instead give to other charities, until the Salvation Army stops discriminating against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in hiring, firing, promotion and in the provision of benefits,” continues the voucher, which can be downloaded from www.soulforce.org.

But officials with the Salvation Army said the vouchers haven’t registered with the group.

The charity hasn’t noticed the three-year protest, according to Maj. George Hood, the Salvation Army’s national community relations and development secretary.

“This is the first I’ve heard anything about it, so the folks in the field either aren’t seeing it, or are not reporting it,” said Hood, who is quoted on the Soulforce voucher as saying that hiring gay employees “really begins to chew away at the theological fabric of who we are.”

The purpose of the kettle protest is to let gay men and lesbians who want to contribute to charity know that they can do so without funding discrimination against themselves, said Laura Montgomery Rutt, director of communications for Soulforce.

“The Salvation Army has come out in past years and said, in essence, that homosexuality is a sin to them,” Rutt said. “They are certainly free to believe what they believe, but it’s so important that gay people know that when they drop money into a Salvation Army kettle, they’re funding their own oppression.”

Protest launched after White House lobbying
Soulforce and other gay rights groups ramped up protests against the nation’s oldest charity in 2001, after the Salvation Army’s national body officially adopted two gay-related positions.

That year, the Salvation Army announced it would allow its four regional territories to make their own decisions about offering domestic partner benefits to employees. On Nov. 1, 2001, the Western territory announced it would offer domestic partner benefits in compliance with a San Fransisco law requiring all city contractors to provide domestic partner benefits.

Less than two weeks later, the Salvation Army’s national Commissioner’s Conference revoked the domestic partner policy, saying it was intended to provide benefits to an employee’s spouse and children — not unmarried partners.

That same year, the Washington Post leaked a 79-page internal memo from the Salvation Army that claimed President Bush made a “firm commitment” to honor the organization's request to be exempt under Bush’s “faith-based” initiative from state and local laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Genesee County Michigan chapter of Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays became the first group to launch a voucher protest in 2001, soon followed by PFLAG chapters throughout the country.

This year, instead of organizing a national kettle voucher protest, PFLAG allows each chapter to decide whether to continue dropping the vouchers in Salvation Army buckets.

“In a lot of places, it was a really great way for people to express their frustration with the Salvation Army and its anti-gay policies,” said Ron Schlittler, director of the field and policy department at PFLAG.

“But in some places — particularly smaller towns where the Salvation Army were the only [charity] in town — it kind of backfired, and our chapters were criticized for picking on this so-called 'good' organization,” he said.

Schlittler praised Soulforce’s effort to continue the protest on a national level.

“In the context of movement politics, none of us can really own these strategies,” Schlittler said.