I first saw the link that had been posted by a Christian blogger I follow on Facebook. "World Vision: Why We're Hiring Gay Christians in Same-Sex Marriages". The comment she added indicated that she didn't feel that the organization was making a huge mistake. This launched her into a Facebook discussion which, judging from the tone of later comments she made, got a little heated and less than friendly.
I do not want to get into that type of discussion. Although I think about the issue of how the church treats the GLBT community and have done some (online) reading on the topic, I am not ready to debate the issues right now. I don't have the energy. I'm not actually sure what I think about the issues, but I can tell you for sure that some types of responses and arguments will leave my faith in worse shape than it's in right now.
But I am going to write about one aspect of this situation that is troubling to me. It seems, from what I see on Twitter, that some Christians feel that they should no longer support children through World Vision. The are dropping kids immediately. I don't have a news source worthy citation for this, but I heard that as many as 2000 kids may have been dropped already.
I don't know how many new sponsorships WV usually gets in a donation cycle (month?). Maybe they can pair new sponsors with existing children and make sure they get what they need. But it seems likely that some kids who thought they had a committed sponsor will not get the help they usually get this month.
The problem is that kids and families are counting on this support to meet basic needs. If a child did not have a sponsor to begin with the family might have found a different way to meet the needs. But a sponsor committed to helping the child. It was a promise. Now it's gone.
So I'm going to post a link to a site with information about World Vision and how to sponsor a child. If you would like to help fill the gap this situation has created all the information you need is on Rage Against the Minivan's World Vision sponsorship page.
That's pretty much all I have to say about that. So far I have not had to post a "comment policy" for this site. In this case, though, I will be fairly rigid. I do not want to discuss the morality of homosexuality or the right or wrong of World Vision's change. I'm not even interested in slamming Christians who have decided to drop children. I have said that I feel they have made a promise and are breaking it, so I guess to be fair I should be willing to listen to people who have a different view of that action, but I fear there will be a fine line between that and having the whole discussion.
So mostly, I just wanted to provide some information for people who are interested in helping children who need it right now.
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