When I first heard about Chick-fil-A’s stance on gay marriage, I felt boycotting that them is stupid. Yeah, their views on gay marriage are ignorant, but I guarantee that if you knew the ideals and morals of the owners of most fast food establishments, or any multimillion-dollar enterprise, you would feel offended and/or appalled.
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We live in a country where corporations have more rights than the people it employs. If we knew all the beliefs of every multimillion-dollar corporation owner, we would feel uncomfortable buying most products in this country.
CEO of Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, may not have been using the best judgment when he chose to take a stance on gay marriage. He owns a fast food franchise, but he’s not a senator. His personal beliefs are up for public scrutiny, but don’t affect the laws concerning homosexuals.
Having a different set of beliefs doesn’t mean you should boycott his establishment. If you’re Christian does that mean you shouldn’t eat Halal food? Besides, he has the First Amendment right to have an opinion and voice it, but there comes a time when free speech becomes hate speech.
It’s one thing to say I don’t like gay marriage, but you bring it to a completely different level when you say, ‘I don’t believe homosexual behavior should be protected as a class,’ which is one of the main objectives posted on the Marriage & Family Foundation’s website – the organization founded by Chick-fil-A vice president Donald Cathy.
One of the items on their agenda is to stop efforts in Virginia to add homosexuality to the list of protected classes in non-discrimination laws. Essentially, that will give corporations the right to say we will not employ someone based on their sexual orientation.
Another organization Chick-fil-A supports through its philanthropic organization, Winshape, spent $25,000 to lobby congress in support of the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda.
This is about more than chicken and a man’s right to voice his opinion on gay marriage. This organization is using its religion and resources to pursue the oppression of a group of people. No matter what race, creed, or sex, at some point in history, your people were oppressed, and just because we came a long way does not mean we can’t revert back to America – pre-civil rights.
If you choose not to take a stand, you are not necessarily a bad person. But ask yourself: what message are you sending when you support a company that helped to fund a campaign that called for the death of thousands of men and women in Uganda, whose only crime is having a different belief system?
When you support Chick-fil-A, you are vicariously supporting a group that acts similarly to the groups that funded the Nazis.
Garvey Ashhurst is a young up and coming poet, songwriter, and blogger. He is the reason that the system is afraid of a black man in a library. His aim is not to be Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Ghandi, but he hopes to make them proud by keeping their ideals alive through his lifestyle. He hopes that one day young brothers will one day say I want to be the next him.
