This article was originally published on Ex Post, a website created by some current and former economics students at Grove City College. Check out the original article here and subscribe to the newsletter.
Every year, shoppers are greeted by “red kettle” events where volunteers for the Salvation Army stand out in the frigid cold, collecting donations in a red bucket for programs that help the poor and homeless. The Army's social service programs have an excellent record1 with charity trackers. However, there are those who are not impressed. The red kettles have been rebranded as “bigot buckets” by some progressive activists. Unfortunately, these activists care more about ideological purity than charity.
Around the holiday season, internet users undoubtedly come across posts like the following:
This post or some variant of it is shared via email, Instagram, Facebook, etc. for the purpose of deterring donations to the Army. I know not where it originated, but what I do know is that it is shared frequently, especially in progressive groups. Examples of this can also be found in the comments of a recent advertisement for the red kettle program.
The allegations of bigotry against the Army are nothing new; this article explains the history of the allegations. Essentially, there are members of the LGBTQ community who claim to have been discriminated against by the Army’s food and housing services. While the Army denies these allegations and has taken steps to combat claims of homophobia (and a host of other phobias), activists are not satisfied.
These allegations of bigotry are levied no matter what the Army does. The article further notes that activists have explicitly acknowledged the steps the Army has taken and are still unsatisfied.
Ross Murray, who was at the time of this article’s publication, the director of education and training at GLAAD (a LGBTQ advocacy organization), stated, “The Salvation Army has been advertising that it will help LGBTQ people in need, which is a good step, but it can’t be the only step,” Murray continues, “The Salvation Army’s anti-LGBTQ history was multi-faceted. And its path to LGBTQ acceptance is also going to have to be multifaceted.”
Progressive activists do not care about charity; they will take nothing less than a total renunciation of fundamental Christian beliefs. However, these activists misunderstand the nature of these beliefs and how they influence volunteerism. Let’s examine how this perceived bigotry effects the production of charitable goods.
One way one can think of the Army is in terms of a club. Part of the benefit of a club is the ability to exclude entrants. If the club is forced to accept members that are unwanted, then the club is considered less of a good by its members, or not a good at all. Membership will falter, or the club will collapse altogether. In the name of inclusion, the good is destroyed. This might partially explain the collapse in donations collected in the “red kettle” program.
The Army’s fundamentalist views are one of the characteristics its volunteers desire. There are alternative charities that Christians can volunteer and work for, but these alternatives are unlikely to hold fundamental Christian views. While working for the Army, its volunteers and employees are benefited by knowing that their work is going toward promoting and/or maintaining fundamentalist beliefs. They also benefit from the implicit guarantee that their personal beliefs will go unchallenged.
Forcing the acceptance of LGBTQ values or publicly demonstrating against the organization lessens the benefit to volunteers and workers, therefore, threatening the production of the Army’s charitable goods. In other words, volunteering as a Christian is part of the compensation for the volunteers and workers. Even those volunteers who are not Christian will be subject to the scrutiny or harassment of progressives and other activists. As a result, these non-Christians will prefer work where they do not have to explain and defend beliefs that they do not hold. This will cause them to prefer other volunteer work that has less of a negative stigma.
This might explain why some Army chapters have had a difficult time getting volunteers to stand outside and collect donations. This role is a vital input in the collection of donations, which have fallen since 2019. While the impacts of the movement toward online shopping and the pandemic era on charity probably share responsibility for this decrease, the motivation for volunteering and organizing this charity cannot be ignored either, and the encroachment of progressive values might be culpable to some extent.
At the end of the day, the Army’s critics simply do not understand production. When you punish production, less will be produced. Likewise, when you force producers to accept a worldview they find undesirable, they will produce less or nothing at all in order to escape these attacks on their integrity. Perceived bigotry is, therefore, not a useless component in the production of these charitable services, but an integral part of production. Holding to fundamentalist beliefs in one’s charitable work is part of the compensation to the workers and volunteers and revoking that will decrease production.
Consequently, if progressive activists wish for the poor and disadvantaged to be given charity, they should be willing to allow what they perceive as bigoted individuals or institutions to provide charity. Holding an ideological purity test for charitable services only satisfies the preferences of activists, leaving the poor and disadvantaged with less. Essentially, activists are willing to sacrifice charity for the extraction of a meaningless commitment to LGBTQ values.
If the activists cease their attacks on the Army, then more resources could be directed toward providing food, housing, and other services. As this article notes, the Army provides some of its volunteers with cards explaining their position on same-sex marriage and other issues. They also issue statements and compile testimonials from LGBTQ community members whom they have helped. If the attacks cease, then all of this pandering can cease as well, and all of the resources directed into signaling commitment to the LGBTQ community could be directed to more productive endeavors.
Ultimately, charity, volunteering, and organizing religious nonprofits yields benefits to the producers (volunteers and organizers). Part of the total benefit is working with an organization that is aligned with your personal moral beliefs or advances your moral beliefs in one way or another. Forcing the organization to make moral concessions diminishes these benefits and therefore discourages the production of these charitable services. The progressives and LGBTQ activists that boycott or harass the Salvation Army are ultimately doing a disservice to the poor and homeless for the sake of extracting a meaningless commitment to LGBTQ values. If they want to criticize the Salvation Army for being inferior to other charitable organizations and encourage the donation of funds to alternative charities, then they should do that instead of simply being against the Salvation Army.
This article is a great way to combining social issues with Christmas!
I love the line, "Progressive activists do not care about charity; they will take nothing less than a total renunciation of fundamental Christian beliefs. However, these activists misunderstand the nature of these beliefs and how they influence volunteerism. Let’s examine how this perceived bigotry effects the production of charitable goods."
It's fascinating how the perception of organizations effect the amount of volunteers they receive. Hopefully one day conservatives have a strong pull like this.