Tolerant and Loving Left-Liberals and Chick-Fil-A

Before noting in the comments that anyone is within his rights to boycott anything, please note that this undisputed point is already acknowledged in what follows. Here’s the always sensible Anthony Gregory on the episode:

In the last two weeks, we have seen the weakness of many left-liberals’ support for civil liberties. Last week, progressive bloggers, activists, and politicians piled on Chick-fil-A, whose president Dan Cathy has spoken critically of and supported groups that oppose gay marriage. For his stance on this issue, which is not all that different from Obama’s stance just a year ago, many in the gay rights movement decided to boycott his fast food chain. Whatever one thinks of this, it is well within the rights of people to vote with their dollars. The Executive Director of Log Cabin Republicans argues that the boycott is poor strategy, however, because “turning a chicken sandwich into Public Gay Enemy Number One makes LGBT people look superficial, vindictive and juvenile—everything that we as a community have worked hard to overcome.”

Yet far more disturbing to anyone interested in civil liberties was the threat of a government crackdown on the basis of the business owner’s political opinions. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Boston mayor Thomas Menino both indicated a willingness to keep the restaurant out of their cities, using their power as government officials to fight the culture war.

While the most consistent left-liberal voices for civil liberties, among them the ACLU, have defended Chick-fil-A’s right to open a business regardless of the proprietor’s political views, there has been far too much silence or even enthusiasm toward these threats of political coercion, which carry potentially totalitarian implications. A government that can prohibit people from engaging in peaceful commerce based on traditional cultural and conservative political values is as big a threat to civil liberties as anything the left imagines a conservative Big Brother poses. Most strikingly, left-liberals often, with a lot of justification, decry the Red Scares in American history—the private and public ostracism and at times oppression that befell communists, communist sympathizers, or anyone deemed too far radically left in America. Communism posed a real threat to world peace and liberty, and its political leaders collectively murdered close to a hundred million people in the 20th century. If Americans should have a right to pursue work despite their sympathies for such a violent ideology, surely Chick-fil-A shouldn’t be blacklisted simply for holding traditional views on marriage.

Read Anthony’s “Progressive Betrayals of Civil Liberties.”

Anonymous

The ability to censor one’s opponents held in higher regard than the ability to speak one’s mind: sounds like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
dennis

What irks me about this is that I am absolutely opposed to Chic-Fil-A’s politics, but as a rule that doesn’t prompt me to boycott something. But then, politicians come out and make the company look sympathetic by engaging in typical political thuggery. Now deciding to eat at Chic-Fil-A is loaded with political implications. There is one opening near my home in a few months, I had thought i’d give it a try and if it was really good it would overcome the creepiness of their Charlie Churchiness. Now I feel like if I eat there I’m standing in solidarity with people whose views I find abhorrent, making this much different from going to a Clooney movie or something like that. Had this whole kerfuffle never occurred I could have tried the place, knowing full well about its political religious beliefs without feeling the least bit conflicted, now if I eat there it’s like I’m giving people the wrong idea about me. Stupid politicians.
Freedom for All

It is government who keeps gay people from getting married not Chic-Fil-A. Let’s ban government from operating in Chicago for a while. Here’s betting things get better. They certainly couldn’t get much worse.
dennis

Yeah, it’s funny that by the logic of these politicians, President Obama wouldn’t have been welcome in their cities until a couple of months ago.
Anonymous

From Randy Hannig, the director of a social-conservative hater group (Equality Illinois):

“Company President Dan Cathy clarified Chick-fil-A’s views of gay
and lesbian Americans, shedding light on its multimillion dollar
donations to groups that actively seek to influence government leaders
and the public to take away rights from gay and lesbian individuals ”

While Hannig relentlessly works to take away from all social
conservatives their most fundamental human rights (freedom of
conscience, speech, religion, etc.), that is, to destroy our democratic
functioning.

“The company is using its dollars to shape public and political discourse by funding organizations that promote homophobia in the U.S. and abroad.”

While Equality Illionois is using its dollars to shape public and
political discourse by promoting hatred of social conservatives and
“conservative-phobia” in the US and abroad.

“In a petition, Equality Illinois is urging socially responsible
business and institutional leaders across the country to challenge
Chick-fil-A’s discriminatory practices and end all relationships that
enable the Chick-fil-A brand to operate on their premises.”

As far as reported, CFA does not discriminate in its business
practices. What Hannig is doing is a public smear of CFA equal to what
the Nazis did of Jewish businesses in the beginning of the 1930s. Hannig
first shamelessly smears CFA with a false accusation of discrimination
practices in order to justify his call for a sordid destruction of this
upstanding company. This is a company where 60,000 employees work making
a decent living in a decent environment. The majority of the employees
are young and very much in need of their jobs.

Obviously, it takes a vicious organization to want to destroy all of this, but it’s what “Equality” Illinois is doing.

Equality, you note.

“We urge mall owners who rent space to Chick-fil-A to look deeply at
the hateful organizations the company supports. We ask university
officials to reconsider accommodating a business that ostracizes a
large segment of their student body. We want corporate leaders who allow
Chick-fil-A to do business in their offices to consider a new restaurant option during contract renegotiations.”

It would be nice if mall owners looked deeply at what CFA supports –
they might be shocked to find out just how much CFA is being smeared. It
would be even more important if these mall owners looked at how much
violence and harm people with a homosexuality agenda cause in society.
But, we know, there won’t be much of a chance for the latter.

Equality Illinois’ aim is to ostracize millions of social
conservatives in society, along with any such student, and turn them
into social pariahs.

“We want corporate leaders who allow Chick-fil-A to do business in their offices to consider a new restaurant option during contract renegotiations.”

Why, it’s like the National Socialists targetting the Jewish business owners in 1932.

Hannig: “We’d like all Americans to think twice before they bite into their next Chick-fil-A sandwich.”

So would we. But we would also like for everyone to think about what “Equality” Illinois is trying to do.