By Rusty Pugh and Jim Brown
June 21, 2002

(AgapePress) - A pro-family group says one city in Maine is so intent on furthering the homosexual agenda, it is willing to face legal action to do so.

Last May, the City of Portland, Maine, adopted a policy that requires all agencies with which they do business to offer "domestic partner" benefits to all employees. At the same time it approved the new regulation, the City Council rejected an amendment that would have exempted religious organizations like The Salvation Army. Because of its policy, the city voted to discontinue funding The Salvation Army's meals-on-wheels program and a senior center.

The well-known charitable agency stands to lose $60,000 in annual government funding because it refuses to provide health-care benefits to the domestic partners of its homosexual employees. Salvation Army officials deny they discriminate against those employees, noting that domestic partners of their heterosexual workers also do not receive health-care benefits.

But one council member who supports the new measure told Cybercast News Service that if The Salvation Army wants to receive funding from the city, "it's going to come with strings attached."

Michael Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, says the city ignored the potential legal problems of defunding The Salvation Army.

"The city council knew that they were acting hastily, without adequate input from legal counsel, because they had inquired of [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] whether or not they could do this -- and they did not wait to hear back from HUD," he says.

Heath says that action raises an important question: "Is the city council so intent on enacting the gay agenda that they're willing to waste tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on legal [action]?"

According to Heath, The Salvation Army appears to have been singled out. "Catholic Charities, which also receives [federal] funding from the same funding stream ... is not in the picture at this point as being defunded," he says, "which we're wondering about [and] why that is. What we discovered in probing is that there have been negotiations ongoing ... that apparently affect Catholic Charities, but not The Salvation Army."

Unless The Salvation Army changes its mind and decides to abide with Portland's policy, the funding will be cut off July 1.

© 2002 AgapePress all rights reserved.

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