Salvation Army

[Ms. Toad]

24. This is a really hard question for me.

The Salvation Army's formal national policy, and the practice in many localities is homophobic. One of my earlier memories of this reality was in the early to mid 80s when they returned a large donation because it came from a gay organization (or perhaps an openly gay person). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to any formal recitation of the story down.

The memory and time frame are pretty clear because within a year of that well publicized event, I was on the planning committee for an LGBT conference. At the end of the conference we had a significant quantity of food left over and tried to find a charitable organization that could or would accept it. No one would. We had not even tried the Salvation Army because of the publicity around the check that was returned to the donor. Finally, rather than just throw the food in the dumpster, we called the Salvation Army. We told them who we were and asked if they would accept the food. They were enthusiastic about it and didn't care that it was coming from an LGBT group. There were hungry people who needed it, and they were willing to come pick it up and get it to those people.

So, my experience on a local level has been positive.

That, and my grandfather was a bell-ringer for them for years. I have very few fond memories of my grandfather- and this is one of them. So, even though it goes against all of my principles to support an organization that is working against who I am, I typically feed the bucket a few dollars a year in memory of my grandfather.