To our Facebook community: First and foremost, thanks for your patience as we made sure we gathered the facts in regards to recent postings. We have determined that one of our independent Restaurant Operators in Pennsylvania was asked to provide sandwiches to two Art of Marriage video seminars. As our fans, you know we do our best to serve our local communities, and one of the ways we do that is by providing food to schools, colleges, civic groups, businesses, places of worship, not-for-profit groups, etc. At his discretion, the local Operator agreed to simply provide a limited amount of food. Our Chick-fil-A Operators and their employees try very hard every day to go the extra mile in serving ALL of our customers with honor, dignity and respect.
—Chick-Fil-A, writing in an official statement on Facebook, attempts to deflect criticism after it was listed as a sponsor of the Pennsylvania “Art of Marriage” conference alongside the event’s organizer, the Pennsylvania Family Institute. Which is all well and good, but the restaurant’s own charitable unit the Winshape Foundation is backing a marriage discrimination project from the rainbow lovers at the Ruth Institute
Citizens for Community Values event. CCV says it is “officially affiliated” with three of the country’s most anti-gay groups: American Family Association, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family. (Back2Stonewall)
Judas
Any chain restaurant that requires that all locations be closed on Sundays makes me think they may be leaning towards the religious right… thus I have never eaten at chik-fil-a
Mdoutloud
Chck-fil-a has incredible charitable spirit. They have REQUESTED to hold parties for my special needs classes in our public high schoolwith free food, gifts and entertainment. They offer incredible oppurtunities for everyone regardless of faith, sex, or orientation. So, they gave free food to a group that we loathe. We don’t need to jump to such harsh conclusions because of that. What a good example of them treating everyone fairly, isn’t that what WE really want? To be treated equally and fairly and yet we attack when others do it. There are stands that we need to take, however, this is not one of them.
bfenster
You really should check out Jeremy Hooper’s amazing reporting about this over at Good as You. It turns out Chick-fil-A has deep ties, through their charitable organization, to the entire movement to ban gay marriage. It’s really disheartening and somewhat scary.
Check it out: http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2011/01/chick-fil-as-winshape-foundation-now-partnering-with-noms-ruth-institute.html
justiceontherocks
@MDOUTLOUD – are you slow? They “offer incredible opportunities regardless of faith, sex, or orientation”?? Really?? Wonder how many openly gay, Jewish or Islamic people have chick-fil-a franchises. How many ties do they have to have with right wing groups to convince you they’re not your average everyday biz?
Come on. Quit apologizing for these bigots just because they feed their swill to your local school. Kids shouldn’t be eating that garbage anyway.
Hyhybt
@bfenster: Until more is known about the nature of those links, I’d say it’s more cause for worry than condemnation. What, exactly, are they partnering with them to do? Best I could tell from reading that over at GAY, and I admit I could have missed something, but it appeared to me that everything listed was for the legitimate purpose of encouraging people to marry and strengthening existing marriages.
If (BIG if here) that’s so, then they’re doing good… even if they don’t include gay couples in that, so long as they’re not actually working against us. And if they have groups better known for anti-gay activism working on supporting actual marriages for a change, well, so long as they don’t support the other side of those groups, that’s OK by me.
But that’s based just on that one blog post; cause for concern but not, yet, time to bring out the pitchforks.
Charlie
Chick-Fil-A can’t really be held responsible for what an individual restaurant owner does.
Cam
@Charlie:
No, but they CAN be held responsible for the ties to the anti-gay organizations through their national headquarters.
Davey Wavey's Vagina Monologue
Don’t you just love it?
Hyhybt
@Davey Wavey’s Vagina Monologue: 🙂
@Judas: Yes, but it *does* have other advantages: whatever you may think of people who work in fast food, being closed on Sundays gives Chick-fil-A a pretty strong advantage. Having the same, set-in-stone-guaranteed day off every week is a really big deal. Having it be a *weekend* day is unheard of… unless you work for them. So they pretty much get first pick.
please
@Mdoutloud:
Ask you local Chic-whatever to give some free food to a local charity that’s gay, then get back to us.
the crustybastard
They have longstanding ties to the Christian antigay hate group Focus on the Family.
Even if their dank sandwiches were any good, I wouldn’t pay to eat one.
chris
They give me free food as a way of saying “thanks” for my public service job. So I will now eat there more often just as my way of saying “Thanks” for letting me ever so slightly decrease your profit margin. 🙂