A Charitable Thought Experiment

What makes a good charity to contribute too?

Do you need to agree with everything a charity does to donate in good conscience, or is it ok as long as it's mostly good?

To help us with our thought experiment,  lets imagine there is a charity called The Lifeline Corps

The Lifeline Corps is passionately committed to eradicating poverty and caring for people who are struggling.  The Lifeline Corps is working to address the dehumanizing scourge of poverty and injustice and educate the public about what it means to live in poverty – and what they can do to help.

So far sounds like a good charity right? Let's keep reading

The Lifeline Corps is an international organization that began its work in 1882 and has grown to become the largest non-governmental direct provider of social services in the country. The Lifeline Corps gives hope and support to vulnerable people today and every day in 400 communities across this country and more than 120 countries around the world. The Lifeline Corps offers practical assistance for children and families, often tending to the basic necessities of life, providing shelter for homeless people and rehabilitation for people who have lost control of their lives to an addiction.

Still sounds mostly good right?

Maybe now you would like to know more about this charity before you donate, so you read some of there positions, and you come across a position about marriage.

The Lifeline Corps holds the position that marriage is the covenanting together of one white man and one white woman for life in a voluntary union characterized by faithfulness, mutual affection, respect and support. It makes this view known in its published Position Statements

The Lifeline Corps anticipates that some will assert that the arguments advanced in this submission in support of the institution of marriage apply equally to mixed-race couples.

 The Lifeline Corps maintains that for important theological, philosophical, historical, social, legal, cultural and anthropological reasons, the institution of marriage ought not to be redefined in this way 

 The Lifeline Corps’s position on marriage is based on its understanding of what the Bible and Christian tradition teach about human relationships and sexuality.

As the union of a white man and a white woman, marriage has been embedded in the culture and tradition of the western world since the beginning of its recorded history. Redefining it to include mixed-race couples may appear to be a simple solution to a perceived present-day inequality, but the notion of marriage as an whites-only relationship is so deeply rooted in our society that its redefinition may have far-reaching effects on the future development of our society that cannot be predicted, while to do so will offend the conscience-driven position of the vast majority of married persons.

Some of you reading this may be taken aback now. How could any charity that sounded so good to begin with turn out to be a racist charity?

Would you donate your money to this charity? If you saw a Lifeline Corps member ringing a bell near a mall, would you give him your pocket change, knowing that it goes to a charity that beliefs mixed-race couples are somehow less then white couples?

Let's take this though experiment 1 step farther. Instead The Lifeline Corps. lets call them the Salvation Army and instead of opposing mixed-race couples, how about opposing same sex couples.

Would that be ok for a charity? Would that make the difference, is it ok to deny gay couples, but you can't deny mixed-race couples?

And, in case you were wondering, all of the paragraphs above were taken from the Salvation Army Canadian website, all I changed was the name and changed references from gay marriage to mixed-race marriage

Do you still feel good about the Salvation Army?