Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

January 2002 – The Salvation Army, an evangelical Christian organization well-known for helping society’s hungry and poor, rescinded a controversial new policy that extended health benefits to the same-sex partners of its homosexual employees.

“We are extremely happy that The Salvation Army has rescinded this policy, because it had caused great confusion and consternation within the Christian community in the U. S.,” said AFA President Don Wildmon.

Numerous Christian and pro-family groups were stunned to discover in early November that The Salvation Army’s Western Corporation, encompassing 13 states, had decided to begin extending same-sex domestic partner benefits. That corporation had done so after the national five-person Commissioners’ Conference had voted to allow the four regional organizations to decide for themselves about the policy change.

The Salvation Army has always been held in the highest esteem by the evangelical Christian community, which made the organization’s decision to include homosexual couples in its benefits plan even more puzzling. Pro-family groups believe that extending benefits traditionally reserved for married couples to same-sex partners equates the two types of relationships, demeaning the institution of marriage.

In explaining the original decision to grant domestic partner benefits, however, Colonel Philip D. Needham, the Chief Secretary for the organization’s Western Corporation, insisted that the new policy was developed “on the basis of strong ethical and moral reasoning,” and that the change in benefits policy was necessary due to “the dramatic changes in family structure in recent years.”

The organization came under intense pressure in 1997, when San Francisco passed a law which required companies and non-profit groups doing business with the city either to extend domestic partner benefits to homosexual employees or to lose their contracts. The Salvation Army refused to compromise – and promptly lost its $3.5 million contract.

After hearing about the new policy allowing domestic partner benefits for homosexual employees, Wildmon asked, “How could a Christian organization like The Salvation Army completely flip-flop on an important policy like this in a mere four years?”

It appears that so many Christians and pro-family groups were asking the same question that The Salvation Army quickly reversed itself. In a press statement issued November 12, National Commander John Busby said, “[W]e deeply regret the perception that the Commissioners’ Conference surrendered any biblical principles in making the original decision.…”