Someone helping to equip a Christmas Refuge for homeless people has asked if I would contribute certain necessities, new underwear, towels, small soaps etc plus 'suitable' Christmas gifts. The gifts can be anything with just 2 exceptions - cigarettes and alcohol will not be accepted.
Now, maybe it's just me but this refusal to allow people to donate cigarettes or alcohol made me quite cross. I can fully understand that the drinking of alcohol on the premises would not be allowed and that if people are inebriated they wouldn't be allowed to stay. I also realise, obviously, that smoking is illegal inside enclosed public spaces.
However, to go so far as to say that people should not even give homeless people a packet of cigarettes or a can of beer, or even give a bottle of spirits to the centre management so that these poor people can have a measured tot at Christmas is an unwarranted imposition of someone else's values on the homeless and on donors. It reminds me of former times when Christian charities running such relief schemes insisted that recipients of their charity should take part in religious practices and services.
This insistence that people toe the line of someone else's values is symptomatic of the new Puritanism which is pervading society and imo to do it to people who already have far fewer 'rights' than the rest of us stinks.
Am I right or am I, as someone has told me, just being difficult?
3 comments:
You are not being difficult, I agree ,...love Jan xx
the last thing you need when dealing with the homeless is alcohol as you really ought to know if you have worked with them.........
Why give homeless people a vice that will hinder them?
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