GoFundMe doesn’t actually say Christians and conservatives need not apply, but it’s difficult not to wonder if that is the intent of their policy change. In the past week, they have shut down the GoFundMe pages of two Christian-owned businesses who declined to participate in same-sex weddings. HotAir reports:
Last week they shut down fundraising pages for Sweet Cakes by Melissa and Arlene’s Flowers, two Christian-owned businesses facing discrimination charges for declining to provide services to same-sex weddings, and caught hell for it from conservatives online. With good reason. Until this week, GoFundMe banned fundraising “in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts,” but Sweet Cakes and Arlene’s Flowers weren’t accused of crimes. They were accused of violating civil antidiscrimination statutes. Even if they had been accused of crimes, only a truly lunatic supporter of gay marriage would treat politely refusing to bake a wedding cake as on par with the sort of crimes people typically think of as “heinous.”
According to The Washington Times, the change in GoFundMe’s Terms of Service, made after it shut down Sweet Cakes and Arlene’s Flowers, includes the words “discriminatory acts”:
The website quietly expanded its list of banned crowdfunding activities this week shortly after The Washington Times questioned GoFundMe’s reliance on its policy against campaigns in defense of “formal charges of heinous crimes” to pull fundraisers for Arlene’s Flowers and for Sweet Cakes by Melissa.The new policy, which includes a ban on campaigns in defense of “claims of discriminatory acts,” would appear to make it more difficult to raise money on behalf of businesses facing crippling civil damages awards after refusing to provide services for gay weddings for religious reasons.
Regardless of there being no formal charges filed, the far left was incensed when Indiana’s Memories Pizza garnered over three quarters of a million dollars in GoFundMe donations.
Progressives began their attacks on Memories Pizza online and via the restaurant’s Yelp page, and the threats and vitriol became so intense that the owners felt they needed to close their small family business as a result. Ultimately, these attacks resulted in contributions from people who sympathized with the owners or otherwise felt they were being unfairly targeted and attacked for their beliefs.
Memories Pizza’s GoFundMe page was not shut down because it was based on a hypothetical question posed to a family member:
The GoFundMe crowdfunding site was used earlier this month to raise more than $842,000 for Memories Pizza owners Crystal and Kevin O’Connor, who said they would not cater a hypothetical same-sex wedding, but the money raised was to support their business and family, not to pay a court award.“In the case of ‘Memories Pizza,’ no formal charges were involved, thus the campaign was not removed,” said the GoFundMe statement.
As with Memories Pizza, Darren Wilson’s GoFundMe page was very successful, raising more at one point than that for Michael Brown’s family:
An online campaign driven by indignant progressives began and was successful in getting the Darren Wilson support page taken down.
So when Memories Pizza received such astounding support, it wasn’t surprising that they decided to put pressure on GoFundMe with regard to private business owners who choose not to support gay “marriage.” As HotAir notes,
So GoFundMe had a dilemma. It could either violate its own policy by keeping Sweet Cakes and Arlene’s Flowers off the site despite the fact that no crime had been committed, or it could reinstate the fundraising pages for those businesses and piss off fanatic, boycott-ready gay-rights activists. In the end, they made the smart business decision by finding a third way. They’d change their policy in the name of keeping those pages offline, knowing that it’s safer for a company to cross social conservatives than to cross the left and their media allies on gay issues.
And therein lies the rub. Crossing Christians and conservatives is “safe” because we don’t respond with the bullying, animated, hate-filled demands and threats of the far left.
Whether we think of it as rising above the fray, turning the other cheek, or just being decent human beings who respect others, we simply don’t react in ways that affect the kind of reaction and change the left demands (and receives).
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