Chick-fil-A: the aftermath

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I wrote in July and August about Chick-fil-A and gay marriage. I thought it was a passing trifle. Lo and behold, the story continues to evolve!

 

 

Let me tell it from the start, in stages:

 

 

1)  The provocation. Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A, talked about the chain’s contributions to various anti-gay-marriage causes, clucking and smirking about his Christian values (“We’re all still on our first marriages,” he said).

2)  The backlash. The Henson company pulled out of a marketing deal with them. Boycotts were called.

3)  The backlash to the backlash. Various conservatives, led by those two intellectual giants Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, declared their solidarity with Chick-fil-A, and invited their fellow True Believers to come eat a chicken sandwich on the first of August. Thousands responded. (It turns out that it’s easier to get people to get involved in politics if there’s food involved. I think we should start letting people vote at McDonalds and Burger King and KFC; participation would go through the roof.)

4)  The backlash to the backlash to the backlash. Gay activists had kiss-a-thons at Chick-fil-A. These were less well attended and not much covered by the media.

5)  The political reaction. A number of northern and western localities, including Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco, declared that they would look very carefully in future at any applications made by Chick-fil-A, questioning whether a business that had self-importantly declared itself intolerant should be allowed to open a franchise in those cities.

6)  Now it’s a freedom-of-speech issue! “They can say and believe anything they want,” one side said. “You can’t forbid them to do business just because you don’t like what they believe.” “Oh yes we can,” the other side said. “They have the right to freedom of belief and freedom of speech, but they have no right to open a store in this or that place. We’ll see about that.”

 

 

The whole thing simmered for a while, and was almost forgotten, except that a few people realized that eating a chicken sandwich isn’t quite the same thing as making a political statement.

 

 

Then suddenly:

 

 

7)  Chick-fil-A redefines its policies: “’The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender,’ Chick-fil-A spokeswoman Tracey Micit said in the statement. ‘Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.’” They also say they are reevaluating the contributions being given to anti-gay-marriage groups. (Why? Because they want to expand their business beyond their traditional Southern base, and they’ve suddenly discovered that it might not be good for business to be known as “the chicken place run by bigots and homophobes.”)

8)  Chick-fil-A’s conservative / Christian supporters suddenly don’t like them so much.  

9)  Da capo. Dan Cathy (see #1) says nothing has changed since this summer. 

 

 

And so forth.

 

 

Maybe sometime I’ll tell you all about the CEO of Papa John’s Pizza griping about how he has to pay for his employees’ healthcare!

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