Radio fundamentalist James Dobson and his Focus on the Family organization have called for punitive action against retailers such as Target, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Home Depot, Barnes and Noble and Kohl’s, singling these retailers out for not allowing solicitations by the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army collects large sums of money from its red kettles and uses some of it for charitable purposes, but some of it for rather uncharitable purposes, such as lobbying in favor of religious discrimination in hiring, advocating for anti-gay discrimination, cuddling up to big government to use large sums of taxpayer money to pursue its parochial agenda.
The Salvation Army loses money for its discriminatory activities when blanket non-solicitation rules outside these stores keep the kettles from being set up. What James Dobson doesn’t tell you is that he and his Focus on the Family organization have a lot of ties to the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army has given Dobson awards for pushing fundamentalist theocracy. Dobson has met repeatedly with leaders of the Salvation Army, pushing them to discriminate more in their hiring and benefits practices. After Dobson won those concessions and the Salvation Army began its discriminatory practices, Dobson in turn started pushing stores to let the red kettles go up. Scritch scritch, scratch scratch. Dobson is returning a favor when he asks his followers to apply pressure so that the Salvation Army can collect more money in more places for its activities that include charitable actions but that also advance anti-gay and fundamentalist Christian activities. Under the banner of a War on Christmas; Dobson is helping an ally in the pursuit of cash.
