Chick-Fil-A CEO posting more anti-gay comments.

[regexcellent]

**** you, my program is less than 5% female, not even kidding.

[Ben Kenobi]

you and i must have eaten at different chik-fil-as.

Foodwise I like their chicken much better than KFC.

[Ben Kenobi]

Chik-fil-a magically became delicious to conservatives when it denounced gay-marriage. A similar thing happened with PapaJohn's and ACA.

I think it's the special sauce. Blood of the innocents and all.

[-Jrabbit]

I remember being curious about the food because their "eat more chikin" Cow Calendars and billboards were pretty amusing. But it seemed like every time I drove by one (usually driving through the South getting my daughter to/from school), it would be a Sunday. Finally, time and opportunity came together several years back. I was distinctly underwhelmed.

The only two CFA franchises in the Chicago area are downtown, 25+ miles away from me, so boycotting is irrelevant; they're just (a) mediocre and (b) inconvenient.

[Elok]

Isn't Cathy being just as "self-righteous" as those boycotting? Using a public platform to give voice to his moral beliefs, which he sees as correct and superior?

Oh, I find Cathy ridiculous, don't get me wrong. But voicing simplistic opinions is AFAICT the primary use of Twitter, along with banal observations on one's day and one-liners from comedians and pundits. But then, I don't use the stupid thing. Anyway, I don't differentiate between dumb opinions based on religion and dumb opinions based on politics or what-have-you. The internet's full of both.

And is it really more "self-righteous" to refuse to give money to a company that you know will donate money to organizations that champion agendas with which one disagrees?

Again: a boycott is an economic weapon. They were trying to force a change in his behavior by doing significant damage to his income. They did not do significant damage, as it happened. But if they had, there would inevitably have been collateral damage. People might have had their salaries cut or been laid off. Given that:

A. the percentage of profits Cathy donated to "pro-family" causes was really pretty minuscule,
B. he donated at least as much, if not more, to non-controversial charities,
C. he'd been doing it for some time, and was still losing the fight,
D. the majority of the country agreed with him on this just ten years ago--hell, a good number of the congressmen cheering DOMA's downfall actually voted for the stupid thing much more recently than that, and
E. even if he were making a difference, the issue in question would affect perhaps 5% of this country's population, and in a relatively modest way compared to the crap-ton of other issues we've got,*

I viewed, and still view, the boycott as unnecessary, ill-considered and over-the-line. Given that most of the people I met who "participated" in the boycott rarely if ever ate there anyway, it seemed to be mainly an opportunity for acting smug.

If anything, going out of one's way to eat at Chick-fil-A just to "spite" those boycotting is more sheep-like behavior than that of the actual boycotters, as at least they can cite valid moral reasoning as above. And "I'm gonna eat there just to piss people off!" is just childish.

I didn't go out of my way; if I hadn't been within half a block of CFA I wouldn't have gone. Nor did I do it to piss anyone off--if you recall, HC said that. I didn't rub it in anyone's face. That would have earned me a double dose of whinging--no, thank you. No, I just felt that the boycott was fundamentally wrong, and the people who were participating in it were *******s who could stand to be stopped. I am not the policeman of my neighbor's opinions. If he's not doing any significant harm by being a nutter or a crank, it's not my place to shut him up, especially if I hurt somebody else in the process.

Consider an admittedly extreme example: the owner of the corner store is a neo-Nazi. He writes stupid Holocaust-denial articles for the local paper and gives money to the local Aryan Brotherhood (whose main activities are strictly-policed rallies where nothing much happens and paying for lawsuits). He is annoying and nobody likes him, but he causes no apparent harm. We all acknowledge his right to free speech, association, etc. But we all steadfastly refuse to patronize his establishment, with the result that he can either publicly repudiate his views or go broke and homeless.

We have not physically, directly forced him to change his views. The government did not become involved. But the effect is not significantly different from what would happen if we'd passed a law heavily fining him for Unlawful Opinion. Of course boycotts should not be outlawed, etc. But there's something hypocritical about "land-of-the-free, First Amendment, but we will hammer you bloody if you take your freedom too far." Granted, the man in my example was a jackass--as is Cathy--but I simply don't like the notion that it's our job to crack down on social heretics. I don't care for the farce of misbehaving-celebrity "apologies," either. Social/economic pressure is a powerful weapon, and like all such weapons it ought to be used with restraint.

*e.g. human trafficking, out-of-control government spending, climate change, poverty, education. And yes, the GOP are jackasses for dwelling on this issue for much the same reason, but they're not the issue at hand.

[Elok]

Holy crap that's a huge post. Sorry.

[ZEE]

lol eloK is a nerd.

[Ben Kenobi]

Apologies for what, Elok? It was a fantastic post.

[DaShi]

Not really. He's just rehashing his previous poor argument against boycotts. As I stated earlier, it's fundamentally flawed. There's no actual insight in there whatsoever. It's smug, self-serving nonsense. Which is why Ben likes it, of course.

[DaShi]

Nevermind, Elok already Godwinized this thread. Big surprise.

[ZEE]

He's a nerd.

[DaShi]

We're all nerds.

[Sava]

Honestly, who gives a **** what this guy says or thinks? Either don't eat their sandwiches or do.

Boris sighting

[Ben Kenobi]

Suit yourself, Da Shi.

[Elok]

Please stop quoting my leg-humpers, BK. I mean, if he's doing something besides vomiting empty snark on something I posted, fine, but I don't come on here to read his rubbish.