There is nothing more vile in the annals of American lore than feeding the hungry - unless they are at a political fundraiser and you're looking for campaign contributions.
Daytona Police descended upon a group of Good Samaritans who were feeding homeless people. These repugnant tyrants have an ordinance which makes it illegal for folks to try and feed the homeless.
Chico and Debbie Jimenez of Daytona Beach have been feeding the homeless in Manatee Park for a year now. Their operation was completely funded by private donations and it was growing. Every Wednesday, they fed more than a hundred people.
Chico and Debbie, along with four volunteers, were each given multiple 2nd degree misdemeanor citations.
The fines totaled $373 per person, $2,238 for the group. The police also permanently banned the group from Manatee Island Park. "We both have made a lot of good friends in the park and are devastated that we are banned the Manatee Park forever," Debbie wrote. "I am heartbroken."
Millions of religious Americans are up in arms (some literally) over the Government's claim to have the right to make sure that employees of certain companies have health insurance that covers birth control.
But when a pastor is prohibited from following the Word of one Jesus Christ...
Pastor Rick Wood recently was ordered by Birmingham, Ala., police to stop handing out hotdogs and bottled water to the homeless in a city park.
Wood, who preaches at The Lord’s House of Prayer in Oneonta - a mining town about 35 miles northeast of Birmingham -- says he was approached last month by law enforcement officers and told he was in violation of a new ordinance that requires food trucks to obtain a permit if they want to sell food.
Wood told the cops he wanted to hand out the food, not sell it - but it didn't matter.
"This makes me so mad," Wood told a local news station. "These people are hungry, they're starving. They need help from people. They can't afford to buy something from a food truck."
While city officials say these kinds of rules are meant to protect the homeless from tainted or otherwise unsafe food, some watchdog groups say they're really meant to drive out the homeless from city parks and other areas.
Crickets.
If city officials wanted to protect people from unsafe hot dogs, they would do well to prohibit the sale of things masquerading as edible dogs at ball games, rather than giveaways in public parks. Instead, they've come up with new twists on laws designed to run the hungry and homeless out of town.
Across the country, more than 50 cities are ramping up efforts to push their homeless population out of downtown areas. Many have adopted... "anti-food sharing" rules in recent years...
Anti-food sharing? ANTI-FOOD SHARING??? That's downright UnItalian, if not UnAmerican.
If you're not getting arrested feeding the hungry, you still might just have another kind of problem: losing your job when your Bishop decides you aren't following made up Scrpture:
The Catholic Church in Missouri has fired a woman in charge of feeding the homeless because she is in a same-sex marriage.
The other side isn't without moral justification. There is the argment that
giving food to the homeless is, well, shitty.
Whenever a community tries to pass laws to govern or ban public feeding, all the homeless advocates come out and scream about how such a ban would be wrong. However, if they really had the best interest of everyone, they would support public feeding regulations. Seriously, it’s a heath and public safety issue!
In St Louis, years ago, I heard about a few college kids going around putting feces in sandwiches and giving them out to homeless people. As sick as that is, at the time, public feeding was not regulated so there were no laws to stop such abuse.
The immoral of the story? The next time you set out to feed the hungry bring
- Bail money.
- Your heterosexual ID (you do have one, right?)
And make sure you don't hand out poop sandwiches, because there's no law against it, okay?