This (and every) holiday season, say no to the Salvation Army

Today I drove through a nearby shopping center and, since it's the holiday shopping season, I saw the usual Salvation Army representative ringing his bell and asking shoppers to please fill his little red kettle with money.

I wanted to pull the naive donors aside and give them an earful; or maybe stand there and hand out anti-SA flyers. But I didn't have the time nor the soliciting permit nor any prepared flyers, so I came home and wrote this blog post instead - for now.

You see, the Salvation Army is not the kind and generous operation it purports to be. The organization - and its leaders at all levels - have a long and disturbing history of religious coercion, abuse, and intolerance.

I wrote a piece in December of 2008 that provided an overview of the issues.

That generated a lot of other stories from readers who showed me that the Salvation Army was even worse than the entity I had exposed in 2008. So I wrote a follow-up piece in December of 2009.

Here are links to those two pieces:

• December 2008: The Salvation Army's red kettle of trouble

• December 2009: The Salvation Army: It gets worse

Please just say no to the Salvation Army - this holiday season and every year. And tell everyone you know.