The Dallas Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving Day, and their halftime show has become one of football’s biggest. On Thursday, the Cowboys announced that singer Ellie Goulding would perform at halftime of the Cowboys vs. Bills game this year.

So far, so good.

The Cowboys work with the Salvation Army to raise money for the homeless, which up to a few years ago was not only not a bad thing, it was a good thing. But in woke America, the Salvation Army may as well be the army of the undead.

Goulding posted about performing the halftime show on Instagram today. In all likelihood, this was one of the happier days of her career – national television, America’s Team, Turkey Day – living her best life, as the kids say.

Along come the wokes to end her great day and drag her and the Cowboys into the madness of wokism.

As even former President Barack Obama recently pointed out, woke rage on social media is not useful activism. It doesn’t help anything. But that isn’t making a dime’s worth of difference to the wokes who believe Obama is just not woke enough – so he gets the “Ok boomer” treatment. As Bill Maher recently pointed out, Twitter (and by extension, Instagram) are not America. They don’t reflect what the majority thinks. As Pew Research recently pointed out, only a small minority of Americans even use the most woke forms of social media, and they skew much farther left than the majority of the country.

None of these facts have reached Ellie Goulding. So when she posted about her best career day on Instagram, and the wokes responded by smearing the Salvation Army and thrashing her for even contemplating any sort of association with them, she buckled. Goulding is threatening to pull out of the Cowboys halftime gig unless the Salvation Army makes a hefty donation to an unnamed LGBTQ cause.

An Instagram post made by Goulding on Tuesday morning, showing her helping at a Salvation Army center in New York, prompted critics of the Salvation Army to respond. While the post has almost 67,000 likes six hours later, some questioned Goulding’s support of the Salvation Army, which they accused of trans and homophobia. Goulding, announced as the performer last Thursday, then made a demand of the Salvation Army. “Upon researching this, I have reached out to The Salvation Army and said that I would have no choice but to pull out unless they very quickly make a solid, committed pledge or donation to the LGBTQ community,” she wrote on social media, via the Dallas Morning News. “I am a committed philanthropist as you probably know, and my heart has always been in helping the homeless, but supporting an anti-LGBTQ charity is clearly not something I would ever intentionally do. Thank you for drawing my attention to this.”

Running away is the easy road, standing your ground draws more fire. So Goulding is bravely running away. Her PR folks are no doubt telling her this will all blow over.

That doesn’t seem likely.

In a press release, Texas Values points out the fact that this is a continuation of the smear the San Antonio City Council leveled against Chick-fil-A. The City Council also targeted the Salvation Army (along with the dastardly Fellowship of Christian Athletes). Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz states the case clearly: “This is exactly why Texas passed the Save Chick-fil-A religious freedom law that protects charitable donations. The Dallas Cowboys should put charity above politics and allow this performer to walk before caving to this extortion request.”

For the record, the Salvation Army does not discriminate against gays or anyone else. Through the association with the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game, they have raised an amazing $2.4 billion for the homeless. They exist to help people in need. By all meaningful accounts, they are good people who are good at what they do.

If you’re following along at home, the wokes have helped exactly zero people with all this. They have created a useless conflict between a young successful singer and one of the western world’s oldest and most generous Christian charities, and also, by the way, America’s Team. They also have otherwise well-meaning people bickering over a conflict that ought not even exist. We should be talking about how the Cowboys’ late-game play-calling will cost them the game, not the repeated smear of a venerable charity.

Going forward, the Salvation Army is going from being the beloved Victorian tradition that brings red kettles and Santas to our storefronts every year at Christmas, to being a pariah – unless someone stands their ground and dismisses the woke rage brigades. Other Christian organizations are already facing neo-discrimination. Dallas, for instance, bans churches from housing the homeless even when we experience sudden cold snaps as we have across Texas this week. Dallas and San Antonio are in big, bright red Texas — and they openly discriminate against Christian organizations as matters of official policy.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has handled the NFL’s national anthem controversy extremely well, arguably better than any other NFL owner. Jones may not be the hero we want, especially if you want to see the Cowboys win a playoff game, but depending on how he handles this he just may be the hero we need.