By Christopher Chow

Northwestern University's Student Senate has chosen to forgo community service at the Salvation Army because of the charity's stance on homosexuality and domestic partner benefits.

Speaker of the Senate Bassel Korkor wanted Northwestern to begin a long tradition of community service. The Associated Student Government Senate consists of Senators elected by their dorm residents. The Senators determine how certain college funds are allocated toward student clubs, activities, and campus improvements.

"Basically this whole getting into community service thing is an initiative I wanted to take as speaker of the senate this year," Korkor explained to Campus Report. "The Senate's never done community service before, this is brand new. I worked it out with some community service groups on campus for our schedule, and the Salvation Army's fit best for us. So that's what I decided to go with and I announced that to the senate on November 7th."

Korkor announced to the Student Senate a week later that he was calling off plans to do community service with the Salvation Army because of the 149-year-old charity's stance on homosexuality. "We stay away from the Salvation Army, obviously because-it was brought to my attention-I was completely unaware-it was brought to my attention that they had some problems with discriminatory hiring practices with gays and lesbians. And then just recently actually since I made that decision I've learned new things about the western region of the national Salvation Army, which decided to grant domestic partnership benefits to their unmarried partners of their employees, gay and non-gay. But then on Tuesday, apparently, the national Salvation Army nixed that decision from the western region. So, another display of kind of anti-gay sentiment," stated Korkor. "Senators brought it to my attention-e-mailed me some links that had some information on the Internet about this. I looked into those. I contacted the [BGALA (Bisexual Gay And Lesbian Alliance)] I researched it more first to verify."

The Salvation Army's mission statement reads, "The Salvation Army, a international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination."

"The Salvation Army holds a positive view of human sexuality," states the Salvation Army's official May 2001 position statement on homosexuality. "Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life. There is no scriptural support for same-sex unions as equal to, or as an alternative to, heterosexual marriage."

When it comes to helping the needy of the world, the Salvation Army chooses to follow Christian doctrine and love the sinner. "In keeping with these convictions, the services of the Salvation Army are available to all who qualify, without regard to sexual orientation."

The charity's stance on domestic partnerships is that they are not equal to the sacrament of marriage. "The Salvation Army affirms the New Testament standard of marriage, that is, the voluntary and loving union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, this union being established by an authorized ceremony."

Northwestern student leaders cited a July 10 Washington Post article that accused the Salvation Army of making back-door deals with the Bush administration concerning hiring practices. According to the Post, a Salvation Army document stated the White House's "firm commitment" to make sure religious charities will be exempt from certain gay discrimination codes and requirements to provide domestic partner benefits. The Post then went on to describe the Salvation Army as being, "starkly different from that of volunteers ringing bells outside shopping malls at Christmas."

Salvation Army spokesman George Hood called the Post article misleading.

Korkor told Campus Report that there were no objections to his decision, "Nobody objected. They listened, they were open- minded. They took it very well and they agreed. I think if any of them knew anything discriminatory was going on none of them would support it either. So I let them know that, and then you know none of them would support something like that. After I made that decision I've been getting a lot of feedback from members of the Northwestern community that are gay and that have been working on this for a while."

"I just heard of a big protest that's being arranged in Chicago for Friday November 23. It's a Salvation Army anti-gay-hate protest." He believes that this coming holiday season, the nation's largest charity will lose financial support from the public. "They prepared statements why we're not giving to the Salvation Army this year to put into the kettles instead of money," he said.

The Senate will instead volunteer community service at Cornerstone Community Outreach, a soup kitchen in Chicago. "A lot of senators volunteered for that community service. More senators in fact volunteered for that community service one than the Salvation Army one."

When it comes to giving time and money, the Salvation Army does not discriminate in its services. Supporters of the charity urge Northwestern to do the same.