Christian Children’s Fund Rejects the Goodwill of RolePlaying Gamers

Stories like this trouble me.  Every year GenCon, what’s probably the largest annual gaming convention, holds a charity auction for the sponsored charity that year.  Two years ago, it was Make-A-Wish.  Last year it was Christel House International.

This year, the charity was supposed to be Christian Children’s Fund. They were chosen by Gary Gygax‘s estate because he had supported the organization previously.  Some folks state that they were his favorite charity.  Instead they turned down the money as well as their status as official charity.

It’s being reported that the organization turned down the money because they felt the money would have been tainted since it was coming from gamers and from the sales of gaming material, specifically Dungeons and Dragons material.  Or as Rich Burlew puts it “puts an irrevocable taint of evil on the filthy lucre that us demon-worshipping gamers might want to use to, say, donate to starving children.”

Now there’s two sides to this story of course along with some gray area.  CCF is stating they they turned down the position because of misuse of their logo.  Not sure why they couldn’t work with GenCon to straighten out the mess nor do we know what these other reasons were because the logo misuse but that is their response.  Folks are also stating that they’ll never give the organization another cent while others are suggesting that we should all remain calm and hope and pray that things will work out.   Others are quesioning their “Christian” status.

But then we have the gray area.  Folks seem to be forgetting that GenCon is currently being sued for an outstanding donation by LusasArts for the Make-A-Wish Auction a couple of years back.

Who’s right and who’s wrong?  Well the money this year went to Fisher House Foundation and they received almost twice what was raised the previous year.  CCF’s response really sounds like butt covering and damage control to me but they may have had an issue with the use of their logo.  We don’t really know and chances are we’ll probably never know.  They have every right to reject and and all donations that they receive.  Politicians do this all the time.  Of course nothing was stopping them from taking the money and keeping their mouths shut.

Me?  I’m just impressed that I actually wrote an actual blog post.  Even with that annoying bug screwing up the editor.  How often do you see that?

Image taken from here.

edit: There’s an interesting thread on the Giant in the Playground forums that’s worth a read.  And, yes, I’m aware that there’s a number of typos in the Post.  I’ll fix them later when I have the time.