A Chick-fil-A boycott in Central Park? There’s really no choice, is there?
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Samaritan’s Purse Health professional checking patient’s religious affiliation and sexual orientation before treatment
Samaritan’s Purse, the organization that’s built a 68-bed respiratory-treatment field hospital in Central Park is part of evangelist Franklin Graham’s organization and opposes gay marriage. Naturally, the left has gone ape shit.
Samaritan Purse is a Christian organization, founded on the belief that his followers should obey Jesus’s instruction in his parable of the Good Samaritan that they “go and do likewise”. It provides emergency response and rescue service around the world, including in Islamic countries like Syria. And just as that other company founded by a Christian, Chick-fil-A, cheerfully serves all customers, gay, straight or just confused, Samaritan’s Purse treats everyone equally. That’s not sufficient, for some:
Group Behind Central Park Coronavirus Tent Hospital Asks Volunteers To Support Anti-Gay Agenda
[The] group is led by Franklin Graham, a notorious anti-LGBTQ and Islamophobic preacher with a track record of using humanitarian missions to proselytize an evangelical agenda.
Graham, the son of prominent minister Billy Graham, has specifically sought to recruit Christian medical staff to the Central Park facility. According to the group's website, all volunteers, including health care workers, should read and adhere to a statement of faith, in which marriage is defined as "exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" and the unrighteous are sentenced to "everlasting punishment in hell."
Asked whether the Mayor's Office considers this problematic, a City Hall spokesperson said the field hospital will operate as a Mount Sinai facility, and must adhere to the hospital's policy against discrimination. The spokesperson did not say whether the city was concerned that volunteers on the project are expected to agree with the group's anti-gay faith statement.
…. Some New Yorkers said they were leery of receiving care from a fundamentalist group whose own members believe their sexual orientation is sinful.
"I don't want to demonize people who are volunteering their time, but it is a concerning thing," said Amy Martin, a Brooklyn resident and former nursing assistant.
"…. [As] an LGBT New Yorker, I would be hesitant to make that my first choice of care. I'd much rather be seen anywhere else."
State Senator Brad Hoylman called on the preacher to publicly assure LGBTQ New Yorkers that they would receive the same treatment as all other patients.
“COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, and neither should Franklin Graham," he said. "It’s unacceptable that a New Yorker infected with COVID-19 could be subjected to discriminatory treatment from an organization whose leader calls us ‘immoral’ and ‘detestable.’"
Mayor Bill De Blasio, who previously called for New Yorkers to boycott Chick-fil-A because of its “anti-gay” founder, will doubtless soon join all proper New Yorkers and shun the field hospital, too: “Just as no proper-thinking person, even if starving, would accept a juicy, tasty chicken sandwich from a bigoted Chick-fil-A volunteer,” he told FWIW, “he/she/it/whatever will choose to die, rather than patronize a hospital that doesn’t endorse gay marriage. We have our standards, and won’t lower them even to the bitter end. (cough)”
