“Salvation Army is an Anti-Gay, Pro-Life Evangelical Christian Organization”
…so don’t donate to them.
The above headline was taken from Reddit, one of the most popular sites on the web, self-described as “the voice of the internet.”
The site draws me for its tech news and amusing internet time-wasters.
But it’s also a popular hub for atheists, reddit.com/r/atheism, and for homosexual people: reddit.com/r/lgbt. These sub-websites give an amusing look into a world most religious folks are blissfully ignorant of.
Take a peek for yourselves at these choice quotes from the above article:
Helping people is clearly a secondary goal of [the Salvation Army’s] church. Which is what they claim themselves as in order to bypass anti-discrimination laws so they don't have to have any pesky gays around.
SA refuses to employ gays, and claims itself as a church to bypass anti-discrimination laws. They clearly have helping people as a secondary agenda, and even threaten to pull themselves out of places in order to sway legislation. They are using their helping people as political leverage.
[Salvation Army is] blatantly bigoted. Why give money to them?
If you are gay you can't help those starving or homeless. It is more important to them to force religious agendas rather than help people.
They may not deny services to specific people whose actions they find morally objectionable. But they certainly hate gay people enough that they're willing to do whatever it takes to deny them equal rights. Why not give your money to an organization that does good work without pushing a fucked up hateful agenda?
[Charities like SA] …are immoral. It's disgusting bigotry against other people, and they're getting our money to do it.
It doesn't cancel out the good things they have done, but it's a mitigating factor. It would be like learning that the local soup kitchen is run by the modern-day Klan.
Someone might say "Look, they're just forcing any poor or homeless black people to listen to lectures about the inferiority of the black race before they get to use their services. So what if it's bad; think of all the good they're doing!"
Read hundreds of comments like these, you start to get a sense of the real bitterness and hate coming out of the atheist and homosexual cultures.
Salvation Army has a “fucked up, hateful agenda”? The Salvation Army is akin to the Ku Klux Klan? Really?
Tell that to the few commenters, including a handful atheists, who were bold enough to speak up:
I grew up in a dirt poor single mum family. We had a small house and that was it. Mum was doing all she could but we lived off 50c noodles. And every year without fail, the salvos gave us Christmas.
That. fucking. meant. so. fucking. much.
It was just a box with some tinned veg etc, a bottle of sauce and a roast with some little toys and clothes for myself and my sisters. And it meant. so. fucking. much.
They didn't judge us. They didn't ever give us sermons. Hell, they didn't even ask if we were Christian. And it wasn't just Christmas. The old ladies at the salvo store would hunt for an hour or so to find us fitting clothes. They gave us books (kids ones). They gave us bread when things got a bit to lean. They did so much for us and asked nothing back.
They were there for us when no one else was. And now I have grown up, and I have a job so I have money to spare. I donate. I suggest you do too. They make the world so much more worth living for so many people, don't just circlejerk at them because they don't agree 100% with you. These people make a difference.
Personally, I am now avoiding joining these discussions. The frenzied blitz of propaganda and hatred is almost impenetrable and ultimately stifling. It’s like trying to speak softly to a person screaming in your face.
It’s far worse than anything I’ve seen in the religious world, even with its extra helping of dumb people. The “agree with us or be an anathema” mentality is far worse than religious cults.
It is helpful to describe the worldview that characterizes this atheist part of our culture:
- Religion must be overthrown, religious people are backwards, ignorant hypocrites, and God is a myth.
- LGBT FTW! – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. You are member of this group, or support their agenda. Anything less is outdated moral bigotry and intolerance.
- Drugs should be legalized, starting with cannabis.
- Virtually all forms of human sexuality are valid.
- Fuck the moralizers, live and let live.
- Porn is awesome!
- There’s no such thing as right and wrong, there exists no real evil, it’s all relative.
- Business is the devil, most everything should be free.
- Politically to the extreme left.
- Separation of church and state is great, except when it comes to the state interfering with the church, in which case they favor state interference.)
In some ways, it’s an inheritance of the values of the 1960s: politically left, free love, drugs, free everything. But now the sexual liberation has been extended, and the “spirit in the sky” is now a myth of the ancients.
Defend God and faith? You’re a deluded Evangelical -- maybe even a laughable Young Earth Creationist, bwaahahaha! -- who just needs to read some Dawkins.
Defend pro-life causes? You’re a freedom-suppressing, anti-choice chauvinist. (And you’re probably a man, so you’re a sexist, too.)
Do you think homosexuality is morally wrong? You’re bigoted, hateful, intolerant religious whacko.
Either way, this sub-culture will flame you, down-vote you off the page, or find some way to silence you and make a caricature out of you.
Remember, they are the intelligent ones, the enlightened moderns, the open-minded of our generation. And it is you religious people who are backwards, bigoted, close-minded, and stupid.
Whatever your view, if it counters their agenda, you’re given a label.
- Think it’s a bad idea to kill human embryos prior to birth? Your label is Sexist.
- Think race should be ignored when it comes to employment and schooling? Your label is Racist.
A powerful thing, these labels.
Once you’ve been labeled, debate and thought and introspection has been rendered unnecessary. Your ideas need no assessment.
All that remains is to make a caricature of you. Let the mocking begin, you Homophobic Racist Sexist Intolerant Xenophobic excuse for a human being.
That is the predominant worldview of this subculture in the United States: politically left, stifling religion in all forms (even charities), morally backwards, calling evil good, calling good evil.
That is not to say all atheists follow each of these views, but this is the general worldview and value system of the politically left-of-center, atheist world, with varying degrees of extremity.
I’ve seen it now for 10+ years on big internet hubs like Reddit and Digg, heard it espoused on left-wing political radio here in Minnesota, have seen it on television nationally. Heard it first hand from atheists friends and relatives.
This is not a new phenomenon, however. I’m strangely comforted by that. This is a problem that was around 2000 years ago, something the first disciples had to address directly, whether in idolatry or simple denial of God:
God's angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life.
Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn't know how to be human either—women didn't know how to be women, men didn't know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.
Since they didn't bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it's not as if they don't know better. They know perfectly well they're spitting in God's face. And they don't care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!
I am convinced that what Paul, a Jewish disciple of Jesus, described so long ago also describes this generation.
While it may also describe previous generations to a degree, it seems to be snow-balling: what is acceptable today was unthinkable yesterday. It keeps getting worse.
I don’t mean to sound like Auntie Prude, but hell, our TV, our music, our books are filled with things that would be morally shocking to our parents’ generation, a generation not prudish by any measure.
I am trying to imagine what exactly my kids will receive in the next generation – what will be so revolting that it would be obscene even to today’s generation? (Bestiality? Drugs? Pedophilia? Public suppression of religion? Violence towards the religious?) Whatever it is, history shows the next moral obscenity, whatever they think up, will be acceptable by the next generation, God help them.
Know that I’m not some old fart going on about the good ol’ days of yesteryear. I’m 27 years old, and I see it clearly in my generation.
What the hell is happening to the world? And where are we headed?
How has it gotten so bad that people are demonizing charities and convincing others to stop donating to them in the name of No-God?