I don’t about you, but my Facebook friend list decreased dramatically today. Former coworkers, teachers and friends from grade school, who I didn’t even realize held such bigoted beliefs, were posting how they went out of their way to eat Chick-fil-A to celebrate Mike Huckabee’s “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.”
It came to a point where I couldn’t even look at my Newsfeed.
But when I did, I read the reasoning of some of those and saw that they weren’t celebrating gay hate, they were celebrating freedom of speech. The First Amendment.
Which scares me. No, terrifies me.
Because this whole chicken issue isn’t about freedom of speech or freedom of religion. It’s about a COO donating thousands of the company’s dollars to organizations that discriminate an entire population of people because of the way they were born, in the name of Chick-fil-A. Part of me wants to give some of those “friends” the benefit of the doubt that this issue has been spun as an amendment right, instead of the true issue that is at hand, a civil rights issue. Or, as a “pro-family” argument. And who can argue with the simple term “pro-family”? (And I’m not referring to what the conservative groups have dubbed for the “perfect” man-wife-2.5-children brood.) Pro-family to me is rooting for a family who loves each other, whether that consist of a man and wife, husband and husband or two moms.
Politics are always two-sided. It’s like an optical illusion … based on where your views land on the spectrum, you either see it as the pretty lady or the old hag. But numbers don’t lie, specifically ones with a dollar sign in front being dumped into the vaults of organizations that lead in the battle against marriage equality and LGBT rights.
Cathy can have his beliefs, and he can say that he’s opposed to marriage equality. That’s his prerogative. Personally, if he did that I still wouldn’t eat at Chick-fil-A, but I realize that I’m firmly on the equality side of this issue (obviously). But when asked whether his company had an established position against marriage equality, he replied “guilty as charged.” The company. Not him. And it’s the company that is funding these hate groups.
So “friends,” yes … it’s absolutely a gay hate thing.
