Chick-Fil-A - Boycott or support?

[FatFreddysCat]

So I'm confused... if I eat at Chick-Fil-A now, am I a hate mongering homophobe, or a brave defender of corporate free speech?

Seriously though... this is a non issue to me. Until this flap started, I had no idea that Chick-Fil-A was such a large corporation. The only Chick-Fil-A restaurant I have ever seen was in one of the local malls and since I've never encountered another, I had always assumed that it was an independent mom & pop operation. Imagine my surprise. It's been there for years 'n years and to be honest I don't think I've ever eaten there anyway. I'm more of a cheeseburger kinda guy.

I thought the "Support Chick Fil A Day" thing was kinda stupid, but the planned retaliatory "Same Sex Kiss-In" is even stupider.

The company president didn't say "We hate gays" or "We won't serve gays" or "We won't hire gays." Maybe his personal view is out of step with a lot of people, but I don't see the point in taking it out on the chain's individual franchises and their employees.

[indianasmith]

I'm really depressed about this right now.  My best friend has become so militant on this issue that we can barely talk, and he has completely abandoned his faith in God.  It is breaking my heart.

[Trevor]

I'm really depressed about this right now.  My best friend has become so militant on this issue that we can barely talk, and he has completely abandoned his faith in God.  It is breaking my heart.

That ^ is very sad indeed, Indy. 

Where does a South African stand on this issue? Well, I like chicken and I am a celibate bisexual male ~ I could never be 100% gay as I am very much attracted to women ~ and I do have my religious beliefs. The God I believe in made me this way and I try and live my life right: no drinking hard liquor, no smoking, no drugs, no sleeping around: straight edge, as Jase would say. 

As far as Mr Cathy's beliefs go, I have no problem with him voicing them and I have no issues with his stores not opening on Sundays.

So this issue is a storm in a tub of chicken as far as I'm concerned.

[Mofo Rising]

I don't think it's a great idea to boycott Chick-Fil-A, but I understand the position of those who wish to do so. I vehemently disagree with anybody who is anti-homosexuality, but if they wish to voice those opinions, they are more than free to do so. Unwise for a business, but they are a private entity and can say whatever they wish.

Note: They are not free to do whatever they wish. There's a reason there are anti-discrimination hiring laws in this country. Although, it should be stated that while the Chick-Fil-A owner has stated his anti-homosexual views, his company has done nothing that actively flouts these laws.

While it is true that most Americans identify themselves as Christian, it is not true to assume that all of these people are anti-homosexuality. The actual percentage of Christians who view homosexuality as a sin is undoubtedly much lower than the overall percentage of Christians. Christian belief is not a monolithic entity, and to assume that all Christians hold the same beliefs about everything is a fundamentally flawed position. I've stated before that many, if not most, homosexuals I know are active churchgoers. Disagree with their interpretation of Christianity? Well, they disagree with yours.

In the long run, I think this kerfuffle is a good thing. Bringing homosexuality into the national discourse is important. Communicating ideas and arguments is valuable, and the primary way we advance as a species. I'm wholeheartedly disappointed that we still have to hear things like this, but we gain nothing by ignoring conflict. Sometimes it goes the other way, but open argument is one of the best ways to promote understanding. Better than hidden hatreds and agendas.

As far as Chick-Fil-A is concerned, their food is okay. I like it, but it's not amazing. Then again, it's pretty hard to mess up fried chicken. It's delicious.

Lastly, and I don't mean to hector this point, but it's pretty crass to come out against homosexuality while pointing out straight males tendency to get aroused by two lesbians kissing as understandable, as long as they are attractive.

[indianasmith]

I never claimed to be perfect!!!!!
And I am certainly aware that many Christians do not accept the Bible's teachings on homosexuality.  But our Japanese friend (I am assuming from his screen name that he is so) did not seem to understand why many Americans are uncomfortable with homosexuality, and that is (I think) largely due to the influence of the Bible's condemnation of it.

[bob]

Bob - I am usually a Chicken Express guy, but I will say that every Chick-Fil-A I have ever been in is clean, well run, and staffed by friendly, courteous people!

I have heard the samethings, however there has never been one in my neck of the woods ever, at least as long as I've been around.

[trekgeezer]

I definitely  wouldn't want to work there

Check out this article http://smallbusiness.chron.com/approved-open-chickfila-11450.html


I have taken part in interviewing people and we could not even ask the person their  age.

I would think that that a lot of these requirements would be illegal.


Far as the boycott, sounds to me like both parties are exercising their rights of free speech  I  definitely don't agree with some of the right wing organizations they support.

[The Burgomaster]

If we boycotted every company that supported policies we don't agree with, we would have a tough time buying anything.  I am very happy to let everyone have their own opinions.  If I like a product, I will buy it.  If I don't, I won't.  I think Tom Cruise is a real weirdo . . . but I enjoy all those damned MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies anyway.

[tracy]

I cannot support gay marriage for it goes against my Christian beliefs. I have also had several homosexual friends that I loved dearly. I do not hate gay folks but I don't support their lifestyle. I think it is between them and God what they do in their personal life whether I think it is wrong or not. I have been in a couple of serious arguments since this boycott subject started and I do believe in their right to free speech....however,I also believe in the Chick-Fil-A owner's right as well. He has never said that gay folks are refused service,just that he cannot support gay marriage. Isn't that his right just as is their right to object? As for this "kissing' thing,well,I'd rather not watch anyone do it. That's a personal experience that shouldn't be simply done for an audience. Gay or straight.
Sadly,I consider this a moral issue being exploited to distract America from whatever is really being done in Washington.

[claws]

NSFW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO-msplukrw

[Cthulhu]

The nearest Chick-Fil-A is thousands of kilometers from me, so I guess that settles the issue.

I cannot support gay marriage for it goes against my Christian beliefs. I have also had several homosexual friends that I loved dearly. I do not hate gay folks but I don't support their lifestyle. I think it is between them and God what they do in their personal life whether I think it is wrong or not.

But if it truly is between them and god, why stop them from marrying by law? YOU are a christian. YOU cannot marry people of the same sex. Why force secular people to not to do things that YOU, as a christian cannot do? You are infringing their freedom.

Sadly,I consider this a moral issue being exploited to distract America from whatever is really being done in Washington.

Yeah, there's probably something to that.

[Leah]

I find it funny how people who are boycotting this is really not hurting the CEO or the owner. Really that's not going to leave a mark, it's just a waste of time.

[kakihara]

i believe i asked "why is gayness of such concern?". what i meant was why is the nation so worried about this instead of something more important? really, who cares about who is gay? when some new law gets passed or some major company "loses" 300 billion dollars and gets bailed out by our money, what do we do? not much if anything. when somebody talks about not supporting a different lifestyle, we line up by the thousands across the country! we are so distracted. not to say that this issue is not important, it is for both sides, but this whole thing is silly. oh and by the way, i enjoy watching 2 chicks go at it, sometimes 3 or 4. but 2 dudes? thats just inappropriate.

[Nakuyabi]

In my observation, our media is always pro-sodomy and anti-Christian, and "tolerance" always only goes in one direction. The reason I oppose "marriage" between two people of the same sex is because it legally imposes their phony definitions of marriage on the rest of us and discriminates against those of us who oppose them based on our creed.

Case in point: the pro-sodomy groups are forever complaining about hiring and firing discrimination, but the preacher at my church was, in fact, forced to resign from a company where he was employed back before he was a preacher because they were ordering all of their employees into some kind of convention or parade or something promoting sodomy. Needless to say, I don't think any of the hate-mongering hypocrites currently screaming against Chick-Fil-A much care about what happened to him, or what happens to the great many more Christians like him they're oppressing and discriminating against in their workplaces. (Incidentally, his courageous stand also convinced another Christian lady to quit.)

Sodomy supporters are always acting as if giving the sodomites their way on "marriage" would be harmless to the rest of us. Oh really? I submit, for your consideration, that sodomy supporters are fascist thugs, that they have bullied, oppressed, and persecuted us using what perverted laws they already have in place, and that they very much intend to use same-sex "marriage" to do the same thing.

More cases in point:

Will anybody who doesn't believe in same-sex "marriage" be allowed to refuse to be the photographers at a same-sex "wedding" on First Amendment grounds? [urlhttp://www.lifesite.net/news/photographers-guilty-of-discrimination-for-refusing-to-shoot-same-sex-weddi]The tyrants in black robes in a New Mexico court say no.[/url]

Speaking of tyrants in black robes, California's Proposition 8 amendment to the state constitution passed with overwhelming support from black Democrats, whereupon the sodomy supporters took it to court. Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who's er, into sodomy himself, refused to recuse himself from the case. Gosh, wonder what his decision was? It's pretty blatantly lawless to rule a constitutional amendment un-Constitutional, but other judicial tyrants stood by their fellow judicial tyrant's decision saying this, of course. By the way, if you support Proposition 8, sodomy supporters think they should "Burn [your] f---ing churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers."

Then there's North Carolina's Proposition 1, which passed 60-40. The sodomy supporters' responses? Here's one of the nicer ones: "Can I just kill everyone in North Carolina?" That link leads to a lot more of this civility from all those loving, tolerant sodomy supporters who just can't quite bring themselves to understand why I'm so bitterly opposed to all this loving and tolerance of theirs.

Their child-recruiting group GLSEN is pushing kiddie porn in schools to ever-younger groups of kids using our tax dollars. Here's one of the cleaner passages from one of the books they're pushing:

My sexual exploits with my neighborhood playmates continued. I lived a busy homosexual childhood, somehow managing to avoid venereal disease through all my toddler years. By first grade I was sexually active with many friends. In fact, a small group of us regularly met in the grammar school lavatory to perform fellatio on one another. A typical week's schedule would be Aaron and Michael on Monday during lunch; Michael and Johnny on Tuesday after school; Fred and Timmy at noon Wednesday; Aaron and Timmy after school on Thursday. None of us ever got caught, but we never worried about it anyway. We all understood that what we were doing was not to be discussed freely with adults but we viewed it as a fun sort of confidential activity. None of us had any guilty feelings about it; we figured everyone did it. Why shouldn't they?

--Reflections of a Rock Lobster

Question: in view of of their pushing this sick stuff on our kids, why hasn't every GLSEN member been arrested for child molesting and moral turpitude?

Answer: Because it's mental child molesting. That's different. We have to be tolerant of it because it's "free" speech (paid for with tax dollars) and they're "fighting hatred" (of pederasty and pedophilia) in our schools. Only a hateful Christian bigot could possibly be opposed making kids read pederastic porn, obviously.

Mercifully, "Safe School Czar" Kevin Jennings, who spearheaded this effort in our schools with full support from the current administration in the White House (not to mention NAMBLA), is gone. Not so mercifully, GLSEN is still very much in our public schools, and continues to push this perversion on our kids. Gosh, why would anybody be afraid to trust sodomites and their supporters with our kids?

Of course, if same-sex "marriage" were legalized, people would almost have to let these perverts "adopt" children and show them these books to help indoctrinate them with their sicko beliefs, wouldn't they?

And if a scientific study makes the mild observation that children on the whole tend to be at a bit of a disadvantage being raised under two "mommies" or "daddies" as compared to the traditional family, well, the people who did that study will have to be "scrutinized" (bullied) won't they? Do you suppose we'd be seeing any of this "scrutiny" from the usual suspects if the study had made the contrary observation? That's a little something to remember the next time sodomy supporters claim the science is on their side: it's easy to bend science to one's agenda when contrary observations are outlawed. That's one reason you'd never know there's no such thing as a "gay" gene and sodomites are most definitely not "born that way."

Needless to say, sodomy supporters are also determined to outlaw reparative therapy just to make sure that nobody is allowed to change his or her sexual desires. De Cecco's analysis of Kinsey's work which suggested that it was telling us sexuality is "changeable as the weather" will, of course, have to be outlawed too.

I could go on, but I think it should suffice to say that as far as I can see, same-sex "marriage" doesn't really have anything to do with love or liberty, but only with promoting perversion and outlawing all dissenting opinions. If a man wants to "marry" another man or a woman another woman, they can already draw up a private legal contract conferring all the general legal benefits of marriage on them; plenty of lawyers are more than willing (for a fee) to play along with any definition of marriage you may have, including if you'd like to marry your sheep. (You might still not be allowed to have sex with your sheep depending on your state's laws, but you can marry them.) Inheritance laws, likewise, allow you to leave everything to whomever you wish, including pets, wild animals, and inanimate objects. (e.g. "I hereby leave my entire vast fortune to be burned on a campfire.")

If marriage is really what you want, there is absolutely nothing in American law preventing you from being married in the eyes of any god who'll have you right now. (The Christian God won't, no matter what any of the Bible-rejecting pretend-Christians who support sodomy may say.) What the sodomite bullies and thugs are seeking is to be married in the eyes of their god the state, which will then allow them to punish dissenting thought criminals such as Christians with unemployment, heavy fines, and possibly prison time. If the sodomites were really into marital liberty, they could call for privatization; instead, they demand the state be their bully pulpit. That's why true Christians and everyone else who believes in religious liberty should resist it.

This latest assault on Chick-Fil-A is merely one in a long line of thuggish assaults on religious liberty in America, and I am somewhat heartened to see that people still resist these anti-religious hate campaigns. With these perverts poisoning the minds of the next generation in our public schools, however, I can only wonder how much longer we'll be able to hold out. The nearest Chick-Fil-A is an hour's drive from my house, but the next time I'm down in the city, I think I'll pay it a visit for lunch.

[lester1/2jr]

It was such a crazy thing. People going out for chicken in protest of a protest.

This is why I watch CNBC and sportscenter not pundit shows. The fault really lies with the initial reaction from liberals though. Surely there are bigger fish to fry than some CEO's rather normal beliefs.