Chick-fil-A Still Hates Gay People

I stopped patronizing Chick-fil-A years ago because of the company's funding of a veritable who's who of anti-gay hate groups.   Despite Chick-fil-A's public relations campaign to the contrary, the company continues to give large amounts of money to these anti-gay organizations. One friend accurately refers to the company as "hateful chicken."  While the company's funding of anti-gay organizations, Rider University's recent refusal to allow a Chick-fil-A on its campus has thankful brought the hate and bigotry funded by the company back into the spot light.  The bottom line is that if you have gay friends and family members or support gay equality under the civil laws, you need to boycott Chick-fil-A like the plague.  Here are excerpts from Patheos on the company's continued funding of anti-gay organizations some of which masquerade as "ministries" that support conversion therapy:

Chick-fil-A, a southern-style chicken sandwich franchise and a self-identified Christian company, doesn’t want to be labeled “anti-gay” anymore.

Earlier this week Rider University in New Jersey denied the fast food restaurant a potential on-campus location because of “the company’s record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ community.”

In a statement sent by its attorney, Chick-fil-A responded to the rejection from Rider University:

Rider University’s survey was recently brought to our attention, and while we respect the University’s decision, this news story represents a good opportunity to clarify misperceptions about our brand. Chick-fil-A is a restaurant company focused on food, service and hospitality, and our restaurants and licensed locations on college campuses welcome everyone. We have no policy of discrimination against any group, and we do not have a political or social agenda.

However, despite the protests from Chick-fil-A’s legal representation, the fact remains that every chicken sandwich you buy from Chick-fil-A helps support anti-gay Christian hate groups.

A recent report from ThinkProgress indicates that Chick-fil-A continues to support anti-gay groups despite claims that it had “ceased donating to organizations that promote discrimination, specifically against LGBT civil rights.”

ThinkProgress reports:

Chick-fil-A Foundation’s most recent IRS filings show it gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-LGBTQ organizations in 2015. Though its website’s FAQ claims the foundation “is focused on helping every child become all they were created to be,” its donations went to groups that do not believe this includes LGBTQ youth.

In particular, “the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave more than $1 million in 2015 (nearly one-sixth of its total grants) to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes,” a religious organization which “imparts a strongly anti-LGBTQ message.”

In addition, the foundation also gave more than $200,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, a Georgia-based “transformative organization” that operates an anti-gay “Christian residential home for troubled youth” and uses propaganda associated with harmful and discredited “ex-gay” therapy.

Also on the list, “the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave at least $130,000 to the Salvation Army. The  Salvation Army is a Christian organization with a long history of anti-LGBTQ housing discrimination, opposition to same-sex marriage equality, and supporting exemptions from non-discrimination ordinances”.

Indeed, Chick-fil-A has a long and well documented history of promoting discrimination against members of the gay and lesbian community. In the past Chick-fil-A donated considerable resources to anti-gay causes, including Christian extremist organizations labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And in the past Chick-fil-A has supported multiple anti-gay Christian extremist organizations, including the Focus on the Family Institute, the American Family Association, the National Organization for Marriage, the Pennsylvania Family Institute, Exodus International and the Family Research Council. These groups are some of the most vehement and vicious anti-gay groups in the country.

Bottom line: The Christian fast food restaurant whose corporate purpose is to “glorify God,” continues to support anti-gay groups and organizations.

If you need to grab something to eat while out Christmas shopping, consider avoiding Chick-fil-A and avoid funding anti-gay hate. 

Where to Shop, Not Shop for the Holidays

Stores to boycott and/or contact with complaints about anti-equality brands

The husband and I believe in not giving financial support to businesses and vendors that are hostile to LGBT equality and same sex marriage.  The same applies to anti-LGBT "charities" like The Salvation Army or locally, The Union Mission that have a documented history of anti-LGBT bigotry or refusing to provide services to LGBT individuals and/or couples.  This year boycotting companies that are anti-LGBT takes on new urgency as Donald Trump/Mike Pence prepare to unleash and anti-LGBT jihad in payback to the 81% of gay hating evangelical Christians who helped elect them. Already, Trump's named picks for Attorney General and Secretary f Education ought to be causing LGBT Americans to have nightmares.  Things will get even worse once Trump makes a selection from his list of anti-LGBT zealots on his Supreme Court nominee list.  The Advocate has an article that looks at companies that deserve LGBT patronage and those that do not.  Another source of information is the Human Rights Campaign's corporate equality index.  Why give your hard earned money those who hate you and want to keep you a third class citizen. 

This year, an added consideration is the need to avoid retailers that carry Trump brand goods, including Ivanka Trump's clothing line.  Equally important is the need to contact these retailers and let them know that their decision means that you and others will choose to spend your money elsewhere.  Yes, it takes time and effort, but over time, businesses can be educated to come to view being anti-equality as being very bad for business.

Please read these sources and spend your money wisely at businesses that support equality and religious freedom for all Americans, not just right wing "Christians."  Encourage supportive friends and family members to do the same. 

Hate - A "Christian" Holiday Value

While most of the world remains focused on the hate and intolerance embodied by ISIS, here at home our domestic religious extremists are having a meltdown over the fact that fewer retailers are willing to engage in the hate and discrimination that are part and parcel with today"s "godly Christians" who are only happy when persecuting and making life Hell for others.  One such whining hate merchant is Linda Harvey, a self-anointed faux expert who pontificates on matters about which she has no  credentials.  Harvey has no legitimate employment and makes her living leading a "ministry" that does little other than condemn others and sow hate and discord and advocate for a Christian theocracy.  In a rant at World Net Daily, a/k/a Wing Nut Daily on this blog, provides a list of retailers who deserve our support this holiday shopping season.  Here are excerpts:

I stopped shopping at Macy’s in 2011 after learning about the retailer’s grossly unjust policy against women. Macy’s management said “yes” to a transsexual young man’s demand to change in the women’s dressing room and rejected a Christian employee’s attempt to block his inappropriate access, even firing her because of her principled actions. And Macy’s star balloons are now a regular feature of most “gay pride” parades.

Then there’s Target. Where to start? Selling “gay pride” T-shirts a few years back was bad enough, but Target is now “proudly standing” with homosexuals and cross-dressers who want to change America’s 1964 Civil Rights Act to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” through what pro-family colleague Peter LaBarbera is calling the “Criminalizing Christianity Act.”
Joining Target in supporting this anti-American, pro-deviance legislation are Amazon, General Mills, Google, Facebook, Paypal, Levi-Strauss and others. Which brings us to another recent traitor, Wal-Mart. This one-time reliable backer of Judeo-Christian standards has gone to the dark side in a big way. Wal-Mart put pressure on the governors of Arkansas and Indiana to oppose religious freedom bills. Why would Wal-Mart side with sexual anarchists against the First Amendment liberties of all Americans to oppose homosexual behavior?

But their unfaithfulness doesn’t end there. Wal-Mart is now a financial backer of deviant “gay pride” parades. What happened to this company? Do not shop there, people!

If you’re thinking toys, avoid Mattel. They just created “Moschino Barbie” with an ad featuring a tragically feminized little boy who plays with Barbies, a wicked accommodation to the current gender-destructive culture.

And don’t get me started on the many in-your-face insults of JC Penney, like ads featuring homosexuals, even on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and choosing as a national spokesperson lesbian Ellen DeGeneres. Did they plan to be so purposely offensive? Seems to be the case.

One has to wonder how someone becomes as seemingly mentally imbalanced and obsessed as Harvey.  One of my guides is to shop at the retailers Harvey condemns and boycott any retailer that Harvey supports.  If you decide to boycott a retailer or support a retailer as the case may be, please take the time to tell them why they have lost your business or gained it as applicable.  Here's a more complete list of retailers Harvey condemns:

Best Buy, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, CVS, Dell, DIRECTV, E-Bay, Ford Motor Co., The Gap (includes Old Navy and Banana Republic), General Motors, Hallmark, Home Depot, IKEA, JC Penney, Levi-Strauss & Co., Macy’s, Mattel, Nationwide, Nike, Nissan, Nordstrom, Office Depot, Staples, Starbuck’s, Target, TJX Companies ( owns TJ Maxx and Marshall’s), Volkswagen and Walgreen’s.

Crying Wolf on Religious Liberty

Hobby Lobby fights government mandate to give employees access to birth control coverage on religious grounds, yet makes millions on products primarily from China where 7 million abortions and forced contraceptive surgeries a year take place

As noted in a number of posts I find nothing more disingenuous - OK, how about outright dishonest - than the claims of the Christofascists that they are being persecuted.  Right up there are the claims of the owners of Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinetmaker, who are claiming that being required to offer employee healthcare plans with contraception coverage is trampling on their "religious freedom."  As is ALWAYS the case with these people, the real issue is that the perceive anything that impedes their ability to inflict their religious beliefs on others as "persecution" and infringements of "religious liberty."  The reality is that unless they are free to trample unimpeded on the rights and beliefs of others, they will claim they are the victims even though they are the ones victimizing others.  It is the reason I hold these types of people in such utter contempt. The New York Times slams these people in a mian editorial.  Here are excerpts:

This week, the owners of two secular, for-profit corporations will ask the Supreme Court to take a radical turn and allow them to impose their religious views on their employees — by refusing to permit them contraceptive coverage as required under the Affordable Care Act.

The Supreme Court has consistently resisted claims for religious exemptions from laws that are neutral and apply broadly when the exemptions would significantly harm other people, as this one would. To approve it would flout the First Amendment, which forbids government from favoring one religion over another — or over nonbelievers.

The showdown will take place Tuesday when the Supreme Court hears arguments on two consolidated challenges to the Affordable Care Act. The owners of Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinetmaker, want to be exempted from the sound requirement that employer health plans cover without a co-payment all birth control methods and services approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

These companies are not religious organizations, nor are they affiliated with religious organizations. But the owners say they are victims of an assault on religious liberty because they personally disapprove of certain contraceptives. They are wrong, and the Supreme Court’s task is to issue a decisive ruling saying so. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the owners trying to impose their religious beliefs on thousands of employees.

 
There are several reasons why the court should find that the law does not apply, starting with the fact that secular, for-profit corporations are not “persons” capable of prayer or other religious behavior, which is a quintessentially human activity. Also, as an amicus brief filed by corporate law scholars persuasively argues, granting the religious exemption to the owners would mean allowing shareholders to pass their religious values to the corporation. The fundamental principle of corporate law is a corporation’s existence as a legal entity with rights and obligations separate from those of its shareholders.

The claim that the contraception coverage rules put a “substantial burden” on religious exercise is very weak. The companies’ owners remain free to worship as they choose and to argue (incorrectly) as much as they want that some of the contraceptive drugs and devices on the F.D.A.’s list actually induce abortions. If an employee decides to use an insurance plan for such contraceptives, that would be a personal decision. It does not burden religious exercise.

[E]mployers are not actually required to offer employee health plans. They could instead pay a tax to help support the government subsidies that are available to those using a health insurance exchange.Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the government plainly has a “compelling” interest in reducing the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions, and in furthering women’s health and equality. 

If there is a Supreme Court decision in favor of these businesses, the ripple effect could be enormous. One immediate result would be to encourage other companies to seek exemptions from other health care needs, like blood transfusions, psychiatric care, vaccinations or anesthesia. It could also encourage toxic measures like the one vetoed last month by Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona that would have given businesses and individuals a broad right to deny services to same-sex couples in the name of religion. The Supreme Court cannot go there.

Bottom line: the owners of these corporations want special rights - which is what we see the Christofascists demanding over and over again.  The Supreme court needs to respond with a resounding "No" and drive a wooden stake through the heart of this line of dishonest claims of "religious freedom."