This is an old, old controversy. It goes back at least to biblical times, when we were forbidden to “bring the hire of a whore…into the House of the Lord” (Deut. 23:18.) The Talmud tells the story of a repentant prostitute, who resolved to donate to the Temple all of the proceeds of the vocation she was abandoning. Could the Temple accept it? the rabbis asked, pointing to the Deuteronomic prohibition. The text gives us only fragments of the discussion. Presumably the rabbis talked about the financial needs of the Temple (“we really need to replace the carpeting in the entryway, it’s getting ratty-looking”), and the possibility of public scandal (“what if one of her clients sees the plaque and is reminded of his former sins”) and the behavioral issues involved (“don’t we want to encourage other women in her profession to repent?”) The ultimate solution, given, in some versions, by a follower of that new rabbi from Nazareth, was elegant: use the money to build a sanitary facility attached to the outside of the Temple. A useful arrangement, which did not actually bring the immoral earnings into the Temple, but served its most basic needs and those of the priesthood.
What no one discussed, so far as the text indicates, was whether the facility should be publicly named for the donor (perhaps as the “Happy Hooker Memorial John” you should pardon the expression, of the above title.) Those of us who use religious and educational facilities funded mostly by philanthropy of one kind or another are familiar with the plaques regularly appended to them, memorializing the donors. Some of us who get our news from public radio and our taste of nature and history from public television are acquainted with the long lists of individuals, corporations, and foundations, at the end of the programs, that “make this programming available” to us. (Back when I worked for US EPA, I also remember noticing the large proportions of those corporations that were on EPA’s list of major league polluters.) Really big donors, of course, don’t just get plaques and mentions, they get naming rights for entire institutions—ball parks, medical schools, whatever.
The issue is twofold: whose money do we accept, and whom do we publicly honor? I believe it’s really important to separate the two, because where money comes from is a lot less important than where it goes. In a capitalist money economy, all money originates as dirty money. All money comes from exploiting somebody. If we refuse to accept dirty money, we will have to find a way to operate outside the money economy. Some people have managed to do it, but only on a scale too small to have any hope of effectiveness. Or only until they become effective, at which point they are irresistibly tractor-beamed into the money economy (viz, the monastic orders in the Middle Ages. Did the same thing happen to Buddhist monastic orders? This needs further research.)
I know that many of my lefty companions will object to this position. For that matter, I personally might draw the line at accepting money (especially for feminist causes) from the Playboy Foundation, but I also believe that such a position—even if it is my position--is a matter of esthetics rather than principle. Or funding the Friends Committee on National Legislation with a grant from Blackwater. (No, gentle reader, that never happened. The previous example did.) You get the idea.
I am a lot more concerned with the second issue—whom do we publicly honor? Now that the misdeeds of Purdue Pharma as Opioid Pusher to America have become widely known, the various institutions and charities named by and for the Sackler family that owns it are re-examining this question. I find that salutary. But I can still remember when a certain Jewish macher, well-known for his contributions to both major Jewish charities and the manufacture of anti-personnel weapons for use in Vietnam, was named by the organized Jewish community of Chicago as Humanitarian of the Year. That was half a century ago. And even then, that was old news. George Bernard Shaw wrote a couple of plays around the same issue, half a century before that.
There are, presumably, some people who are actually willing to donate large sums of money to good causes anonymously, just for the sake of doing good. Are there enough of them to fund all the good causes that need funding, at the level needed to keep them operating reliably? Probably not. Would there be more, if it were no longer possible to use philanthropy to generate good publicity? If all the purveyors of good causes made a public vow to accept only anonymous donations from this day forward? There may be experts in the economics of philanthropy who can answer that question, but it may well be just too hypothetical even for an economist.
Because this raises a further question, first posed, I think, by Lloyd C. Douglas, the author of Magnificent Obsession, a once-popular novel of the early 20th century. His model for virtuous living was to do good secretly, and be utterly open about one’s sins. I have always found that really unhelpful. It means that we will never know about most of the really good things our friends and neighbors (and adversaries and strangers) have done, but we will know all about their sins. Which means we will see our friends and neighbors and adversaries and strangers as completely evil people. If somebody out there is doing good, we will never know who it is. And therefore, we will not see extraordinary virtue as something accessible to ordinary people, like you and me. “Leave it to the nameless saints—not my job.” But by gum, we know who the evildoers are, because the National Enquirer and our streams of social media are eager to tell us, and makes gobs of money doing it.
This is also a side effect of what the Right Wing calls “cancel culture,” which has also been around long before the term was invented. Okay, Gandhi was a sexist and possibly pro-Nazi. Does that mean every preacher of nonviolence was also a possibly pro-Nazi sexist? Or does it just possibly mean that behind some pro-Nazis and sexists is a hidden Gandhi? Martin Luther King was vigorously unfaithful to his wife. And had applied for a gun license before his death. Does that mean that every civil rights leader is an adulterer and a gun nut? Or may it possibly mean that behind many adulterers and gun nuts is a closeted civil rights advocate?
I have, in another forum, recently characterized Bill Gates as “a decent sort, for a billionaire.” That was before his upcoming divorce became public, along with his extramarital activities. Would I still say he was any kind of “decent sort”? I think I would. Because we are all too familiar with billionaires who not only fool around on their wives, but spend their money defiling the environment, manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, and pushing pornography. So far as we know, Gates does not do stuff like that, and has in fact made major contributions to the health of nations. We would like more billionaires to do the same, and if the easiest way to make that happen is to give them good publicity for charitable use of the proceeds of their evils deeds, then let’s give their publicists all the help we can. “Shall we do evil then that good may come?” asks Paul, in Romans 3:8. Well, yes, if that’s the way most of our good comes these days.