bigot bucket rule~

transcription: we dont donate to the bigot bucket

196 @lemmy.world

bigot bucket rule~

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72 comments

When I was homeless, I stayed at a Salvation Army shelter. They knew I was trans and that my legal gender is male, but they put me in the women and families area. I never got misgendered or disrespected while I was there.
- That is, last I checked, against policy. Someone decided personally to have a little mutiny and not be a dick.
  
  It seemed like everyone knew and was cool about it. I was on a first name basis with all the staff and residents. I had to go to the front office every night to get my HRT for the first few weeks until I saw a doctor and got a note that says I can take my own medication. I never had a problem getting my estrogen pills. And at one point a crazy guy developed a harmless obsession with me and kept bugging the staff about seeing me. They told him he's not allowed in the women's and families area and he just has to wait until I come to the mess hall for lunch or dinner. He wanted my help finding aliens or something, the point is all the staff knew where I was and that I was supposed to be there because I'm a girl
- gonna be honest, as difficult as it is to find housing for single men in need, they probably did you a favor.
- Thats not the only problem with them. A lot of times local branches will allow their bell-ringers to skim a little out of the donation bucket. Or more than a little. I can't get behind an organization that doesn't punish stealing charitable donations for yourself.

I’ve written my grocery store asking them to remove the bigot bucket
- It didn’t help
  
  Did you trying flaming donations?

Context?
- The Salvation Army has, throughout it's history, stuck with the anti-gay stance of it's Christian roots, and for some reason everybody remembered that this season.
  
  Most years people keep forgetting. There's a lot going on these days, it's easy to lose track.
  
  they, additionally, are against labor unions and secular soup kitchens. they claim to want to help people, but they won't help people unless it feeds their savior complex and control over congregation.
  the funny part to me is that jesus reads as an anti-authoritarian. he preaches that it is better to help the hungry than to be dogmatic about orthodoxy. makes the salvation army seem pretty unchristian
- The salvation army is a big church and big churches don't like LGBT. They are typically out in force this time of year with the red buckets in front of a lot of big box stores in the US.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salvation_Army
  
  The salvation army is a big church and big churches don’t like LGBT.
  There are similarly big churches to the Salvation Army that are inclusive of LGBTQ+, please don't spread misinformation.
- Around December in the US, the Salvation Army(A Christian group with a bigoted history and overpriced secondhand goods stores) set up outside stores, ringing hand bells and asking for donations.
  They're everywhere that allow them. You cannot escape the ringing bells.
  
  Here in Canada too unfortunately
- In addition to what other people have chimed in, the Salvation Army used to (might still? Last article was in 2014) not pay female workers directly. They would make out their paycheck to the worker's husband. Because women are property.
  I've personally been affected by Salvation Army practices. See, they used to deliver toys to disadvantaged kids around the holidays but those toys come with strings. Not only did they show up to my house when my parents were clearly not home they literally dangled toys in front of me and my siblings I was babysitting and refused to give them to us unless we said we would accept Jesus.
  We were not a Christian family. In fact at the time most of us were part of a different religion (my dad was always agnostic). They cornered a gaggle of known non-Christian minors when they were alone and vulnerable. They manipulated and forced me to say I accepted Jesus so that my siblings could have presents.
  Fuck the Salvation Army.
- In winter the organization Salvation Army will have people stand in public ringing bells to collect donations in buckets as pictured above.
  The salvation army is notably homophobic
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salvation_Army

Here in the SF Bay Area, most of the malls and stores don't allow the Salvation Army or the Hari Krishnas or any group to solicit. I don't even recall a Girl Scout Troupe selling cookies. I still keep the "Don't donate" Vouchers in my wallet just in case I run across a bell ringer in front of a Chick-Fil-A or Hobby Lobby that somehow got approved by the local planning commission.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ec/23/23/ec23236932789ab99222c7df093eefdd.jpg
- Refusing to donate to the salvation army and then going to hobby lobby or chik fil a is pretty wild
  
  Those stores are also located in strip mall areas with other stores, they could just be walking by.
  
  i think they were just trying to give examples of shitty places that allow SA solicitors
  
  Maybe they're going out of their way to express their discontent 🤷‍♀️
- Does my heart good to know people are still doing this. I had a bellringer try to block my hand when he saw I was putting a slip of paper in it. I just looked at him, smiled, and pushed it in anyway. These days I tune them out entirely but I have noticed less and less of them in the past few years. The bucket will sit there but no bellringer in sight.

Remember that the Salvation Army behaves differently depending on the nation they're in. The US Salvation Army has different policies to the British one, which has different policies to the Australian one.
- Weird, yep, looks like they're just different flavors of bigot bucket and you should find a better organization.

But make eye contact and acknowledge the slave's presence.
This isn't hyperbole btw. The salvation army literally uses these people as slaves.
- (cough) Volunteers. How could we survive Xmas without euphemisms.
- How are they slaves?? I had assumed they were volunteers...
  
  Court ordered community service most likely. But also people just looking for help are sent out to do this.

I'm starting to get a bit done with moralizing though. Not like they are present in my country as far as I know, but if someone gets to sleep in a house instead of the street in the winter at the price of homophobia still existing and maybe someone in that same house being homophobic I'm not going to pretend that something despicable has just happened.
Sure in a good world we don't need a charity doing such an important job to be bigoted but it's not like the meme says who to donate to instead.
- They refuse to let overtly LGBTQ people stay and demand that gay men break up with their boyfriends by policy. People have frozen to death outside their centers after being denied entry or being kicked out for being LGBTQ as a result of their bigoted policies.
  Homeless shelters are usually locally run, and I'm sure your local Food Pantry or something would appreciate a donation (especially this time of the year), but if you want to help LGBTQ people worldwide, you could do worse than donating here: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
- there's other shelters that salvation army actively antagonizes and lobbies against so they can have a monopoly on coercing the homeless into swearing to be devout to the salvation army's christofascist views.
  
  Do you have a link? I was having a discussion with someone about this.
- Don't donate cash to anyone, simple as. Make deliberate choices about who you donate to, do research, budget it, keep receipts, regardless of which organisation shows up at your grocery store. You should always give money to beggars, just not to predatory charities.