Brian Gallimore's Blog

The Chick-Fil-A controversy is still fascinating to me and consumes my thoughts for now.  Here are some of my opinions on the subject.

• Liberals organized a boycott to punish a business who is not politically correct and wouldn’t comply with liberal religious demands
• Announcement by Boston and Chicago (and San Francisco too?) mayors of ‘how wrong’ CFA is, and said they were ‘not allowed’ in their city based on their religious beliefs
• Backlash from lots of people who are sick of liberals using political correctness as a wedge (which is what it was designed to do by the way), bullying a decent and loved company who is publicly stating their traditional religious values, and politicization of the subject and more bullying by liberal politicians.
• Some people think CFA stands for bigotry and hate.  I reject this.  I’m actually a little disgusted at the people who promote this as an act of hate.  Every bit (100%) of the hate throughout this debate has come from the liberal side of argument.
• I now realize that (many?) gay people felt that the massive display of support for CFA was a statement AGAINST same-sex-marriage.  I do not think this is accurate.  I think it is more of a support for CFA standing up to liberal bullies, and standing up for ‘free speech’.  (and some of that is misguided)
• I don’t see the act of eating at CFA as rejecting people, or about bigotry, or hate.  It is more about sticking it to the group who will try to ruin a decent business because they don’t agree with their values, and about supporting a business who stands up for what they feel is right even when it is unpopular.
• Falling in line with a boycott organized by liberal activists is a big turn off to me.  There are too many terrible things liberal activist have done in the past.  I don’t trust them.
• The only honest complaint against CFA is that they give money to organizations who give money to supporting traditional values, some of which gets used to lobby politicians to enact anti-gay laws.  The next few points address this.
• Take the total amount of money CFA gives to charity, and figure out how much of that money gets used for the purpose of lobbying lawmakers to make anti-gay laws. Whatever that number is, that is how much hate and bigotry we are talking about. (I’m guessing most of that money goes to all kinds of other things. Wikipedia says “Chick-Fil-A …donations … represents less than 0.01% of the …[Family Research Council]…budget.”)
• Now compare that to all the stuff CFA does that is good.  They are overwhelmingly well into the ‘good’ side of the scale.
• Spending money is a method of voting for your wishes.  Very few stores do all the ‘right’ things.
• All this focus on CFA is unfair.  How many other companies do bad things?  The lure to this boycott is that it pulls at people emotionally because of a very sensitive subject. You are enticed to pick sides, just one of two choices, you are either with us, or you hate gays, no other choices. Siding with the boycott puts you in the position of singling out one mostly good company and punishing them. In your daily life, how many other companies do you deal with? Do you know where their money goes? Do you even know what their values are? Are you sure? Sure enough to punish or reward them? If not, it is hypocritical to single out CFA.
• Here is the biggest point: The reason we have unfairness in the area of marriage is because the federal government has made unconstitutional laws unfairly favoring some people and not others.  CFA does not make laws.  The lobbiest don’t make laws.  All of this action is focused in the wrong direction! Our government officials are the ones that hold 100% of the power to change the situation.  CFA is pushing for their values within the system they are in, they did not define the rules or the parameters.
• Lets say the government changes the laws so that same-gender couples enjoy the same ‘rights’ as heterosexual couples.  Does that solve the problem?  What about families that consist of 2 women and 1 man?  What about their ‘rights’?  Would you boycott places who don’t support that?  If not, don’t you think that is hypocritical too?
• I see the boycott of CFA as unfairly wielding the power of coercion by using the political correctness game.  This is also using sympathetic people who don’t look at the big picture and who don’t weigh more than just a few parameters.  This is the concept of using useful idiots.
• Most of the boycotters are pawns for a cause that if they if the learned all the other aspects of, might not really want to be a part of it at all.  Especially if they weighed all the other things involved.
• This event has demonstrated how apt we are to picking 1 of only 2 sides of an argument.  This concept of ‘you are either for us or against us’ is destructive to us as a whole.  It serves to divide us.