This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Some self-promoters on the fringe right have used the several weeks of devastating rains and floods in Texas to advance their anti-gay paranoia and blame the havoc on the "sodomites" who have invited God's wrath through their behavior — just like Sodom and Gomorrah.
Led by right-wing radio host Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, they point to Houston's openly gay mayor as a reason for God's punishment.
They are a minority, of course, but they get attention because of their extreme accusations, their claim of being God's representatives and their attraction to the naive and vulnerable.
But there is another type of human whose reaction to Texas' plight is entirely different. Rather than point accusatory fingers, they reach out with loving arms. They may not get the kind of publicity the Bryan Fischers get, but they should.
I'm talking about the volunteers who have rushed to Texas to build shelters, provide food and comfort the afflicted.
This group can be personified by 73-year-old Stan Rosenzweig, a volunteer trainer and coordinator for the Utah region of the American Red Cross. He decided to be part of the Red Cross after watching on TV the horror inflicted on the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in summer 2005.
The owner of a technology company in Connecticut, Rosenzweig contacted the Red Cross, took training classes to be a volunteer and headed for the Big Easy, where he dived into the daily work of making lives better for people who had lost everything.
He fell in love with service.
He and his wife came to Utah that December for a ski vacation and he got hooked again. He sold his business, and the couple bought a home in Cottonwood Heights, where he divvies his time between skiing, biking, hiking and helping with the Red Cross.
Rosenzweig has since trekked off to nine major disasters in recent years, including the wildfires in Arizona, where 19 firefighters were killed, a slew of tornadoes in Arkansas and a tsunami in American Samoa, where, he said, "we built 1,600 yurts [as temporary shelters] in 22 days."
One image, he said, will stick with him forever. He watched a small child enter a shelter in Arkansas. The family had lost everything in a tornado.
"We hand out toys to the children," he said. "This boy was given a little Mickey Mouse. He clutched it like a death grip. A few minutes before, he had nothing. Now he had something. That was important."
Rosenzweig is one of tens of thousands of volunteers for the American Red Cross (Utah has hundreds).Major-disaster response is not his primary task. But locals respond to about 100 catastrophes a year, he said, including many house fires.
As a preventive measure, the Red Cross offers free smoke detectors, Rosenzweig said, and has installed about 700 of them in Utah homes.
"I have two messages," he told me. "The more people who go to redcross.org and learn stuff, the less we have to save their lives. And most of what we do is done by volunteers. Come down and get trained and join us."