Anti-gay Evangelical group blasted at tent hospital
BY TODD MAISEL
LGBTQ advocates blasted Mount Sinai Hospital and
New York City Tuesday for partnering with Samaritan’s
Purse medical volunteers and for allowing the
faith-based group who treating COVID-19 patients in a
Central Park tent city, for requiring that volunteers and
employees agree to its “transphobic and homophobic Statement
of Faith.”
Critics panned Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian
charity run by Reverend Franklin Graham, for forcing
volunteers to sign the “Statement of Faith,” a passage of
which affi rms that those who sign it believe marriage as
being “exclusively the union of” a man and a woman.
Members of the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC) held a
socially distanced rally Tuesday outside of the Samaritan
Purse’s tent city, set up in Central Park on East 98th Street,
across the street from Mt. Sinai Hospital. More than two
dozen tents have been erected in the park where medical
volunteers have been treating COVID-19 patients in various
states of illness.
Timothy Lunceford-Stevens informed RPC directly that
he was rejected as a volunteer by Samaritan’s Purse for not
signing the statement.
“On April 5, I attempted to offer myself as a volunteer
to Samaritan’s Purse online, at their Central Park tents,”
Lunceford-Stevens said. “When they heard my qualifi cations
and experience, they said they’d love to have me join them.
But when I got to the end of the interview process, they told
me I’d have to agree to their ‘Statement of Faith.’ I told them
PHOTO BY TODD MAISEL
Protestors blasted Mt. Sinai for accepting help
from Samaritan’s Purse who they say force volunteers
and employees to sign a Statement of Faith
that they say is homophobic.
that I was eager to do the work, even though I knew we had
disagreements, but that I could not sign a ‘Statement of Faith’
that is homophobic and transphobic … They then rejected
my application, with no further communication.”
Lunceford-Stevens said he fi led a complaint against
Samaritan’s Purse with New York City’s Human Rights
Commission. The NYC Human Rights Law and the New
York State Human Rights Law prohibit employers from
discriminating in the workplace on the basis of gender
and sexual orientation. Both laws also bar discrimination
in the provision of services to the public.
James Finn of Michigan also described in a fi rst-person
said he to had a similar experience of attempting to volunteer
to work with Samaritan’s Purse in Central Park,
but being rejected when he declined to sign the Statement
of Faith.
“New York City and Mt. Sinai Hospital must demand
that Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse drop its discriminatory
and bigoted ‘Statement of Faith,’” said Natalie
James, an organizer with the Reclaim Pride Coalition’s
COVID-19 Response Working Group. “We were promised
there would be no discrimination by the notoriously anti-
Islam, homophobic Samaritan’s Purse in its provision of
services to desperately ill New Yorkers. But ... Healthcare
should not come at the cost of basic human rights.”
One protestor said using Samaritan’s Purse was tantamount
to “accepting help from the Klu Klux Klan.”
Hours before the rally, Graham issued the following
statement:
“It’s true, for 50 years, we have asked our paid staff to
subscribe to a Statement of Faith—but we have never asked
any of the millions of people we have served to subscribe
to anything. In other words, as a religious charity, while
we lawfully hire staff who share our Christian beliefs, we
do not discriminate in who we serve. We have provided
billions of dollars of medical care and supplies, food and
water, and emergency shelter without any conditions whatsoever.
Our Christian faith compels us — like the biblical
Good Samaritan — to love and serve everyone in need,
regardless of their faith or background.”
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8 April 16,2020 Schneps Media
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