September 22, 2007
We Just Return Their Pre-Paid Envelopes Filled With Rainbow Decals
We need salvation from this greedy army
The Salvation Army is perhaps the most overrated organization in America. Everyone gets a warm fuzzy seeing their bell ringers outside the Wal-Mart at Christmastime. Woe to anyone who dares to point out that this band of right-wingers in uniforms are just homophobic religious fundamentalist adept at tapping the public purse.
Everyone knows the Salvation Army provides a lot of social services — often with our tax dollars. So the Army operates as a government contractor and thus must meet certain laws and regulations, right? Not quite. Even as its leaders continue to seek taxpayer handouts, the Army demands the right to be free from oversight and regulations that apply to any other social-service agency. It New York City, Army officials demanded and won the right to fire gay people and suspected gay people, even though those folks were working in jobs that were not religious in nature.
Now the Army is at it again. It owns an apartment building in New York City that has for years provided affordable housing for single women. The building is located in a tony Manhattan neighborhood, and someone got the bright idea that the building could be sold and turned into luxury condos, netting the Army a ton of money. All the Salvation Army had to do was evict all of those women.
But wait a minute. New York has strict laws dealing with tenant rights. You can’t just throw people out on the street. So what did the Salvation Army do? It argued in court that, since it is a religious organization, it can do whatever it wants. …
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Filed under: Employment/ENDA, Homophobia, Housing, New York, Radical Religious Right
