*sighs*

[leora]

It's not everyday that the American Cancer Society upsets me. Like almost all people, I am anti-cancer. It's not easy to find someone who likes cancer. It's kind of a given that I dislike cancer a whole lot. But from this article, it looks like the American Cancer Society values not being too publicly seen as taking money from atheists more than it

Comments

[beth_leonard]

Your ETA responded link doesn't link to the ACS, it links to another blog post. My natural response to any article is cynicism, although in the case of athesists, it could certainly be bigotry against them.

The cynic in me says that FBB tried to attach too many strings to their donation, and wanted too much publicity for it, and the ACS didn't want to be used merely as advertising for FBB. FBB wanted to do "matching funds" -- matching who for what? If their maximum $250K donation is not matched, how much would they be giving? Are they insisting that their organization's name, which has not worked it's way up the ranks of local donations or demonstrated its long term commitment to the ACS, be put on equal billing with a matching campaign where their minimum gift could be as low as $10 if no relay walkers chose FBB from the drop-down as their organization of choice? From the first two pages, that's what it sounds like.

Every charitable organization I've worked with has a policy of whether or not to accept strings attached gifts, or gifts that would require the organization to do work to maintain them, such as houses.

--Beth

[leora]

A fair point. I tried to find something linked to the American Cancer Society directly, and the only statement I could find was on their Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/notes/american-cancer-society-relay-for-life/an-open-letter-to-our-relay-for-life-friends/10150278676561640 which basically addresses absolutely none of the points made by Beyond Belief.

I do understand that sometimes something that sounds like a good donation isn't. Like libraries often rejecting random books, since they don't have space for them and they have to keep the books that have the most popularity and utility and that offer a range of options. Even though it feels weird for a library not to want free books.

Which is part of why I had done a bit of quick web searching for anything from the ACS's side of the story. But they seem to really not want to explain themselves as best as a bit of simple web searching will tell.

It's not that I entirely blame them for not wanting to associate with atheists, so much as I think it's horrible if our culture is one where taking money from atheists to try to help cancer patients is seen as something one shouldn't do. But I also dislike it, because it does help support that culture, even if their job isn't to decrease bigotry, because I kind of feel that it's everyone's job to decrease bigotry.