Political Controversy

However, during the last decades of the twentieth century, the Salvation Army placed itself in the midst of controversy, taking a firmly right wing stand as part of the conservative Christian movement. It campaigned against law reform in various parts of the world, including especially Australia, and opposed the glbtq movement for equality in the United States and Great Britain.

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Since the 1970s, the Army has moved away from street evangelizing to become more of a general service provider and has received millions of dollars in government grants. In 1998, the Salvation Army turned down a $3.5 million contract with the City of San Francisco because the city requires organizations it contracts with to offer domestic partner benefits to queer workers.

As a Christian church, the Army refused to offer benefits to gay or unmarried straight workers. In October of 2001, the Western Territory of the U.S. Salvation Army did sign a government contract in which they agreed to provide domestic partner benefits, but after protests from anti-gay Christians, they rescinded the decision just a month later.

The Secret Deal with the Bush Administration

Perhaps the most shocking controversy of the early twenty-first-century Salvation Army revolved around an internal Salvation Army memo, which was made public by The Washington Post in July 2001. The memo exposed a secret deal between the Army and the office of President George W. Bush.

The Salvation Army promised support for the president's so-called "faith-based initiative," a proposed policy to grant hundreds of millions of tax dollars and billions in tax breaks to religious groups providing social services. In return, the administration would support legislation allowing the Army and other Christian groups legally to discriminate against gay men, lesbians, and other sexual minorities.

Although the White House and the Salvation Army quickly backed away from the notion of a secret quid pro quo, many people were scandalized by the cynical deal-making. In a protest led by the gay support group Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), many communities showed their disapproval by placing fake "three-dollar bills" in Salvation Army kettles during the Christmas season of 2001, stating that they refused to donate to a bigoted organization.

Meanwhile, efforts by the Bush administration to grant waivers from anti-discrimination laws to participants in its faith-based initiatives continue.

Boycotts, the refusal to patronize companies or institutions, have in recent decades been organized by glbtq rights advocates to protest discriminatory practices and policies.

"Domestic partnership" is the generic term for a variety of forms of legal and institutional recognition of same-sex couples that fall short of same-sex marriage.

Evangelical Christians, who tend to be fundamentalists and socially conservative, have not been welcoming to glbtq people.

The New Right, which emerged during the last two decades of the twentieth century, combines evangelical Christian morality with a political agenda in opposition to glbtq equality.

First used to refer only to anal intercourse, sodomy was progressively defined by the Church Fathers, and many later lawmakers, to include all sexual acts that could not result in procreation.

Sodomy laws, which provided the legal basis for police harassment of sexual minorities, were conclusively overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 2003, after more than half a century of efforts at reform.

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), an American organization of some 460 affiliated chapters and 80,000 members, works to support glbtq people and their loved ones.

The Republican Party of the United States has not been supportive of glbtq issues, despite the efforts of the Log Cabin Republicans.

Utilizing the principles of relentless nonviolent resistance, Soulforce is an activist organization founded in 1999 to combat the anti-gay rhetoric and polical actions of the religious right