Each year WORLD Magazine honors Christian poverty-and-exploitation-fighting organizations with its Hope Awards for Effective Compassion. The magazine divides the nation into four regions and names a winner in each, plus an international winner. All the winners are profiled in the magazine and readers are asked to vote. The overall winner receives $25,000 and the regional winners and runners up also receive monetary awards.

This is the 10th year WORLD has honored these mostly-small groups which represent thousands of others that meet needs with the love of Christ. This year, WORLD Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky wrote, “It’s an important time to remember the successes of these small organizations, because a disease sweeping across America could hurt their work, unless we find an antidote. In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s nationalization of same-sex marriage, pro-gay columnists are calling for the removal of tax exemption from any non-profit organization that maintains a biblical position.”

Demands that non-profits live under a gay marriage regime could affect so many things about a ministry. Like who gets to work there – would a ministry be able to require that employees and volunteers hold a biblical view of marriage and sexuality? Would it be required to offer insurance, retirement and other benefits to same sex spouses. Would a ministry be able to offer the full counsel of biblical truth to those receiving aid? What about sleeping arrangements at homeless shelters and community homes? There have already been demands that rescue missions facilitate cohabitation for same-sex married couples.

This marriage equality agenda is influential right now. Liberal churches have already succumbed to it. Losing one’s non-profit status could destroy an organization. Christian non-profits who cannot, and will not, heed demands to violate their principles would, for the first time, be required to pay taxes and their donors would lose the ability to exclude gifts to them from their incomes for tax purposes.

Would all church-related poverty fighting lose tax exemption? No. Denominations that approve same-sex marriage would likely retain theirs. There would be challenges and maybe the courts would prevent this mischief. Maybe not. One solution to satisfy the demands of the marriage equality gestapo might be to remove all non-profit tax exemptions. How sad. We’d lose many of these groups who operate on slim budgets.

These groups are what English statesman Edmund Burke called the “little platoons.” Little platoons exist in neighborhoods and communities and, unlike government bureaucracies, can more effectively target the root of poverty and sexual exploitation. Little platoons do a better job than government in changing lives. Faith-based little platoons do even better.

With the loss or weakening of these organizations of compassion, government’s role in social services, already huge, would increase. With relief and compassion groups stripped of their ability to stand against sexual sin, the evangelistic component of poverty-fighting would evaporate. Tragic.

So-called marriage equality is becoming a weapon against doing good.