This year as I settled in to watch my annual 33 seconds of “Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” – that’s the amount of time it takes for me to realize that it’s only fair to the coming year not to make it start with the procession of “special guests and musical performances” ABC has planned to feature – something stood out at me: the name Dick Clark.

No, not because it left me pining away for the American television and radio icon who passed away in 2012 after a heart attack. I wouldn’t wish anyone out of the grave if it meant forcing them to introduce “acts” like Dua Lipa, Blanco Brown, Post Malone, and the cast of something called Jagged Little Pill.

Actually, the name reminded me of another Dick Clarke that you probably don’t know about, but should, since his case offers yet another glimpse of what we are all facing in this coming year and decade: the radical nature of the fascist LGBT political lobby. So radical that they will ensure good deeds aren’t done unless they are accompanied with the appropriate capitulation to the lobby’s political agenda. Behold:

For 19 years, 85-year-old Dick Clarke has raised money for The Salvation Army during the holiday season — 18 of them ringing a bell beside a red kettle for donations outside Nordstrom’s downtown Seattle store. He loved the conversations and the feeling of giving back through the more than $100,000 he collected. He volunteered five days a week, six hours a day. “The best thing I like about Thanksgiving is the next day I go to work,” said the retired teacher and principal. Or that’s how he used to feel. This year, Nordstrom told The Salvation Army it would no longer allow solicitation in front of its doors.

Remember when the LGBT lobby made sure Catholic Charities was forced to close its doors if it didn’t violate church teachings and place orphans in homes of homosexual couples? Sorry foster kids, LGBT political demands trump your hope of having a mom and dad.

This is just more of the same – Dick Clarke can’t help raise money for homeless people and food banks outside Nordstrom’s because the Salvation Army doesn’t sufficiently bow to the whims of the LGBT lobby. Sorry homeless people and hungry kids, LGBT political demands trump your right to eat and keep warm.

As was pointed out when the fast-food giant Chick-fil-A betrayed them in futile deference to LGBT political demands, the Salvation Army has long cared for LGBT people, providing services that include a Las Vegas shelter specifically intended for transgenders.

That’s what made the Chick-fil-A betrayal all the more perplexing given that both groups have never exhibited a shred of anti-LGBT discrimination yet still faced the unjustified wrath of the left’s political activists. It almost seemed as though Chick-fil-A felt that by selling out the Salvation Army they could earn some street cred with those who had hated them for so long.

The fruits of those efforts are now being enjoyed by faithful servants like bell-ringer Richard Clarke.

But the larger story, of course, extends well beyond one man at a Seattle Nordstrom. It involves the rights of association, the freedom of conscience, and economic freedom, of course. But it also includes the question of how long rational people will abide an aggressive, anti-liberty, bullying movement that is on an unrelenting search-and-destroy mission for anyone, anywhere who doesn’t bow the knee to their ideology.

First they came for the cake-bakers, then the adoption centers, then the sandwich-makers, then the bell-ringers. We’ll soon find out who’s next.