So there’s been protests and counter-protests and editorials and clever menu ideas, and that’s only in the past week. I don’t think the Chick-fil-A saga is going to come to a resolution any time soon, so let’s remember what it’s all about in the first place. It isn’t that Dan Cathy opposes marriage equality or that he publicly said so. This isn’t news, it’s been well known for a long time. What was news, and what got people up in arms, was that Chick-fil-A was financially supporting the hate group the Family Research Council. Fred puts it better than I can:
The Family Research Council hates LGBT people. It hates them and it works hard to hurt them at every turn. The Family Research Council is a far, far bigger threat to the LGBT community than Chick-fil-A will ever be.
FRC’s crimes against its neighbors include telling hateful lies about LGBT people every day, 24/7, in every media outlet and every media platform it can find. It tells those lies to promote hate — to stir up anti-gay sentiment and spread it as widely as possible so that they can solicit funds from anti-gay donors and so that they can use those funds, in turn, to influence legislation. The legislation FRC supports denies civil rights and legal protections to LGBT people. It hurts them. It changes the law so that the law will hurt them. That makes the Family Research Council a much worse enemy of LGBT people than Chick-fil-A. So let’s put the focus on them. Let’s go upstream and use this boycott opportunity to make the corner boys roll over on the bosses.
More here. This isn’t about what Dan Cathy said or believes, it’s about what his company does. That’s something we can and should work towards changing. Towards that end, Business Week has some advice for Cathy and his company as well. As someone who used to patronize Chick-fil-A and whose kids love going there for ice cream and the play area, I hope they figure it out before they do more damage to their brand.