There has been a lot of buzz lately about an apparent collaboration between charity minded Tom’s Shoes and the virulently anti-gay Focus on the Family.  It appears that the average Tom’s Shoes customer finds FoTF’s work against equal rights for LGBTs offensive and many of them let Toms’ founder, Blake Mycoskie, know about it.  This prompted the following clarification and apology.  FoTF then countered with their own response.

“It’s perplexing to think that the same voices who champion ‘equal rights for all’ seem so intent on limiting our opportunities to help children in need through wonderful programs like TOMS,” he said. “How distressing that Christians seem to be the only ones not tolerated in our culture of tolerance.”

Daly agreed.

“This is an unfortunate statement about the culture we live in, when an organization like ours is deemed unfit to help children in need simply because we hold to biblical beliefs about marriage and family,” Daly added. “It’s also a chilling statement about the future of the culture we live in. We have to wonder: What will someone decide we’re unfit to do next?”

I noticed the CitizenLink response after reading a Tweet by Exodus President Alan Chambers:

Free #Slurpee day at 7/11. Apparently, it is also cave in on what you believe day @TomsShoes cc: @BlakeMycoskie

The response from FoTF is basically the usual “mean old gay activists made them change their minds” with the addition of “all we wanted to do is help the children.”  Let’s pretend for a moment that a truck just came by and shoveled in all the B.S. and carried it away.

What we have left is a lame attempt by FoTF to launder some of their considerably soiled reputation by drawing from the generally positive reputation of another.  They were just using shoeless children in Africa as the detergent.  It’s disgusting and it’s wrong.

If FoTF had really wanted to help shoe these children, they had other avenues to consider.  Knowing how toxic their organization is, and the likely effect it would have on the effort, they could have done all this in secret, behind the scenes.  Isn’t there something in the Bible about not doing your good deeds in public so people can see you?

Since Toms gives away a free pair of shoes to these kids for each one purchased, why couldn’t FoTF have simply sent out one of those famous direct mailings, the ones they routinely use to scare grandmothers into thinking the world will soon end because gays this or that. Instead, just ask their followers to buy shoes from Toms.  Nice, simple, effective and no grandstanding.

Or here is a thought, they could have taken just a fraction of the millions and millions of dollars of donated funds they have used to denigrate LGBTs, to lobby against their civil rights, and prevent their marriages, and just given that to Toms to send an entire boatload of shoes to needy kids.

If all you want to do is help the kids, then why all the fanfare, Mr. Daily?  You’ve spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars of other people’s money to make that bed, now there is nothing left for you to do but lie in it.

There is no tolerance for the intolerant.

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