Sometimes, there is no winning — even when winning doesn’t matter.
Samaritan’s Purse, the charity arm of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has set up an emergency field hospital in Central Park in New York City, an epicenter in the coronavirus pandemic. But with some people, no good deed goes unpunished.
The temporary tent hospital set up by Samaritan’s Purse houses 68 beds and includes a respiratory field unit.
As our @SamaritansPurse medical personnel finish setting up the Emergency Field Hospital in Central Park to take in #COVID19 patients later today, would you pray for them and the patients they will be treating? pic.twitter.com/wfe4kdi4L9
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) March 31, 2020
Dr. Lance Plyler gives us a look at why ventilators are important during this response to COVID-19, and why our Emergency Field Hospital in New York is equipped with them.@SamaritansPurse pic.twitter.com/2JNkcpYhue
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) April 1, 2020
Some, though, are more concerned with the fact that the doctrinal beliefs espoused by the North Carolina-based charity, helmed by the Rev. Franklin Graham, don’t jive with the secular understanding of sexuality.
In fact, according to The Gothamist, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said he is so “very concerned” about the issue — mainly, the charity’s 2,000-year-old Christian understanding that marriage is a union between one man and one woman — that he assured members of the press he would be sending some of his staff over to the park to “monitor” the faith-based humanitarian group.
The Samaritan’s Purse field hospital will be specifically working with the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, providing care to overflow hospital patients suffering from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. And in a move that can be seen as little less than belittling, Mount Sinai CEO Dr. Ken Davis reassured de Blasio he made Samaritan’s Purse leaders sign a pledge to “treat all patients equally.”
Davis’ apparent suggestion is that he believes the medical personnel with Samaritan’s Purse would have withheld care from those in the LGBTQ community, or simply would have allowed them to die of COVID-19 complications.
“We’re going to send people over from the mayor’s office to monitor,” said de Blasio. “I am very concerned that this is done right. But if it is done right, we need all the help we can get.”
The mayor of the Big Apple said he finds the charity’s understanding of sexuality to be “very troubling” and told his team “that we had to find out exactly what was happening.” Thankfully, for him, de Blasio said he has received “assurances” from the Christian group that they will treat every patient, regardless of his or her sexual orientation.
SOURCE: Faithwire, Tré Goins-Phillips
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