Today, Christians across the nation are visiting Chic-fil-a restaurants to buy a Chicken sandwichs in the name of traditional marriage. Ok, Americans in the south are going to Chic-fil-a restaurants because it isn’t really a Yankee phenomenon.
And although there is evidence to suggest that the spiteful campaign to smear Chic-fil-a has been successful, as evidenced by yougov’s study suggesting a 20 point drop in CFA’s brand approval, in the long run, CFA will be stronger than ever because Americans don’t like bullies.
CFA has never been really concerned about brand approval for those who didn’t and weren’t likely to eat at its restaurants. Most of the outspoken anger has been from crunchy libs that wouldn’t set foot in a fast food chain by any name. Ok, maybe they’d go to Panera.
Unlike the Christian boycott of Pepsi when it was giving profits from soft drink sales to a third party that actually used genetic material from aborted human fetus’ in its lab testing for tasty new soft drink flavors, this was a personal opinion on marriage expressed by Board member of CFA. There have been boycotts in the past to avoid Home Depot, Starbucks and Abercrombie and Fitch because it GAVE MONEY to Planned Parenthood, or FUNDED gay pride parades.
But this kind of boycott is simply new to our political discourse. It is one wherein, we boycott companies based off of their speech. Not their actions. Last week we pointed out that this would be a different case if Chic-fil-a was refusing to serve homosexual Americans. Even this site, would be on board with a Boycott. But never would I consider boycotting a company due to its speech. It wouldn’t occur to me.
It is one thing to boycott a business so that your money will not go to immoral purposes. I do it all of the time. It is another to attempt to bully your opponents through hate speech. That is what this boycott movement is currently involved in and that is why it is wrong.
As Ken Coleman articulates so well,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-coleman/redefining-tolerance-chick-fil-a_b_1711677.html
tolerance of others is not forcing them to bend to your opinion. It is accepting that we have different opinions and then moving on. The left has become increasingly intolerant, especially in the context of societal speech codes. Anyone who values civil liberties should beware this type of behavior.
Do I agree with you that liberals are making a mountain out of a molehill over this? Yes. Is this an example of liberal intolerance? Possibly. Was this completely foreseeable? Absolutely. My point being that Dan Cathy is no victim, and I continue to maintain that people who go out of their way to eat chik-fil-a are just as dumb as people who boycott it. People’s restaurant decisions should not be based on politics. I would eat at chik-fil-a even if they were clubbing seals, because their breakfast is delicious. That’s the way America and capitalism are supposed to work. The problem with your position is that you would support chik-fil-a even if their product sucked, just because of their “values.” That’s not capitalism, and that’s not the way things are supposed to work. There was a time in this country when politics and business were kept separate, as they well should be. You are, as ever, part of the problem, and not part of the solution.