Chick-fil-A, despite its known anti-LGBTQ policies, is still a very popular fast-food chain. Whenever I’ve walked past the NYC location on 37th Street, there is always a sea of people inside the restaurant. While the company has said that it is not continuing to promote their anti-gay policies, their tax-exempt foundation has continued to funnel millions of dollars into organizations that discriminate against queer people.
ThinkProgress reported in March that the Chick-fil-A Foundation distributed $1.8 million in 2017 to non-profits with a history of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. “Contrary to repeated promises that it was winding down it’s giving to groups that discriminate. This included more than $1.6 million in contributions to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a religious group that works to spread an anti-LGBTQ message to college athletes, requiring a strict ‘sexual purity’ policy for its employees that bars any ‘homosexual acts.'”
The head of Chick-fil-A’s tax-exempt foundation, in response to the backlash that has been growing against the organization, dismissed the concerns as an unimportant “political or cultural war that’s being waged.”
In response to this information, two airports have canceled plans to include a Chick-fil-A location, college students and faculty have launched to remove Chick-fil-A from their campuses, and the city council in San Jose, CA, voted 11 to 0 last month to hang rainbow flags and transgender rights flags near the company’s location in the San Jose International Airport.
Still, Rodney Bullard, Chick-fil-A’s vice president of corporate social responsibility and the executive director of the Chick-fil-A Foundation, is standing by the foundation’s hateful decisions. In an interview with Business Insider, he insinuated that because the donations were aimed at “helping children,” that it does not matter if the places he sends it to are practicing or promoting discrimination.
“The calling for us is to ensure that we are relevant and impactful in the community, and that we’re helping children and that we’re helping them to be everything that they can be,” he told BI. “For us, that’s a much higher calling than any political or cultural war that’s being waged. This is really about an authentic problem that is on the ground, that is present and ever present in the lives of many children who can’t help themselves.”
Does Bullard realize that there are LGBTQ children? Many of them who may continue to live in toxic environments and cannot help themselves because of organizations that are telling their parents being gay is a sin or something that can be fixed?
It’s truly funny how all of these religious organizations that are so committed and “passionate” about protecting life and protecting children are very clear that they only mean a certain kind of child. Only a certain kind of life is worthy of protection.
If you care about LGBTQ people or if you are queer yourself, you need to stop supporting this company. I’ve heard how great their chicken and salads are, but this company has made it clear on multiple occasions that they do not care about us. Chick-fil-A has said it to our faces and said they do not care, so why keep giving them your support?
If they think their higher calling is to support hate, then we need to tell them that we don’t support that.
(image: NBC)
(via ThinkProgress, image: Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images)
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