LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kisekileia)

I don't know how familiar people here are with Facebook, but for those who aren't: One application you can add to your account is "Causes", which will let you link from your profile to a profile of a charitable cause, where you can donate money that will purportedly benefit the cause. Problem is, sometimes the title and profile of a cause don't totally match up with the organization the donated money actually goes to. You can figure out where the money actually goes if you read the fine print in any cause's profile, but not everyone clues into that.

Anyway, I discovered an interesting little situation with one of those "causes". This cause is identified as the relatively innocuous Christian organization "To Write Love On Her Arms", which encourages people to reach out in love to help those who struggle with depression, addiction, self-injury, or suicidal feelings. TWLOHA contributes money to a couple of shady faith-based rehabs, but their overall goals and approach to issues suggest nothing but the best intentions. (They contribute to and link to much more reputable organizations as well.) However, donated money for this Facebook cause actually goes to Teen Mania--which, as many of you know, is about as flagrantly and egregiously dominionist as they come. Unfortunately, of all the causes purportedly based on TWLOHA (most of which donate to organizations closer in spirit to TWLOHA, though none of them donate to TWLOHA itself), the Teen Mania stealth cause is the one with 77,000 members (as opposed to under 5000 for the others).

There's a "Report This Cause" link at the bottom left of each cause's profile, so I've reported the TWLOHA/Teen Mania cause to the company that made the Causes application (Project Agape: be careful Googling, there are some quite different organizations with similar names).

I would like to report the cause at
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/188.

The cause appears to promote the organization "To Write Love On Her Arms", which is focused on suicide prevention, awareness of depression, self-injury, addiction, and suicide, and encouraging people to reach out with love to each other. It started with a group of people reaching out to and taking in one hurting, cocaine-addicted young woman, and grew from there. It is a Christian organization, and it contributes funds to a couple of questionable rehabilitation/treatment centres that use faith-based approaches rather than medical ones. However, the general tone of the organization is based around love, and I suspect a lot of non-Christians have signed up for the cause. The official site for To Write Love On Her Arms is www.twloha.com.

However, the money donated to the cause goes to a completely different organization: Teen Mania ministries. Teen Mania is an extreme, militant conservative Christian group that pushes teens to live very restricted lifestyles and evangelize the world (website: www.teenmania.org). Ron Luce, Teen Mania's founder, was awarded an honourary degree by Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Teen Mania runs a one-year program for teenagers between high school and college that bans participants from watching secular television, listening to secular music, dating, and holding outside jobs. At "Acquire the Fire" and "Battle Cry" rallies, Luce exhorts teenagers to fight against the alleged moral bankruptcy of secular/popular culture, often using militaristic imagery. He has compared pop culture's effects on teenagers to rape and terrorism (see the CNN story at http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/08/22/gw.teen.christians/). The site www.acquiretheevidence.com exposes several ethical problems with the organization.

There are a total of 10 causes on Facebook labelled "To Write Love On Her Arms" or "TWLOHA". NONE of them actually direct donations to the TWLOHA organization, though a couple direct them to Fireproof Ministries, which TWLOHA used to be affiliated with, and others direct them to organizations that address the issue of youth suicide. However, the Teen Mania one has 77,000+ members, and the others are all under 5000--and since it's the most egregiously misleading of the causes, I thought it was the most important one to mention.

Sincerely,
(My name)

The problem with donations for causes not going to the organization the cause claims to be about is endemic in the Facebook causes. Sometimes it's not possible to set up donations for the right organization because the organization isn't in the United States, or possibly for other reasons as well. However, I've taken the time to look at the upper left-hand corner of the profiles for quite a few causes, and I've noticed a good deal of variation in how well the organization listed under "Donations to the cause benefit" fits with the name and description of the cause.

So I was wondering--has anyone else found similar problems with seemingly innocuous Facebook causes actually benefitting much scarier dominionist organizations? I'm curious about whether this is a trend.