When Fort Bragg denied our plan to collect canned food at the recent Rock Beyond Belief festival, the news went viral, and was even front-paged at reddit. If you haven’t read it already, you really should take a look at that article. I broke down the regulations that their lawyers were ‘creatively interpreting’ in their pro-starvation policy.

But look what just popped up in my email box.

That’s right…

Fort Bragg says it’s okay for the controversial and discriminatory Salvation Army to feed homeless people. But when atheists do it, it’s an illegal fundraiser. It’s like they thought we were going to deposit canned food in our bank accounts. That’s not how a ‘food bank’ works.

I’m going to find out more next week. On the surface, this looks bad. In the end, I’d hate for homeless people to go unfed. So I’m not trying to stop them. I’m trying to augment their efforts! Well, not their anti-gay efforts, clearly… I’d love to stomp those out.

The Military Atheists & Secular Humanists: Fort Bragg ended up raising around $5,000 and lots of canned food at the American Atheists after party (and a good chunk at this blog). Today’s MASH Fort Bragg organizational meeting was very fruitful. We’re done with the logistics portion on how to deliver such a large amount of food at once. All of those details will be forthcoming with plenty of photos, naturally.