“Thou shalt not use the Lord’s name in vain.”
We learned this week that there’s an exception in the Bible for profiteers who use the Lord’s name in vain to sell fried chicken.
(Oh, wait, did we hear incorrectly?)
We also learned that Americans love to talk about Christian values, marriage, and a majority’s presumed monopoly on free speech.
But what about dollar amounts donated to human rights violators? And what about a lawsuit by one woman who was allegedly fired because she was a working mom?
Thus far, most Americans haven’t heard, or don’t want to hear.
Many of the people who stood in long lines at Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day never got the message that, through annual donations to the Family Research Council and Exodus International, Chick-Fil-A and its WinShape philanthropy unit subsidize efforts to imprison, sexually and mentally abuse, and execute gay people. Nor did they hear about a gender-discrimination lawsuit that was initiated in February and recently publicized by GLAAD.
What people did hear was a mediagenic, CNN-friendly sob story about a couple of evil mayors who acted on their own — without support from major LGBT organizations — to punish a wholesome Christian company.
Many of you have probably been chatting online with friends and now-former friends about Chick-Fil-A. And some of you are wondering how your viewpoints came to be misrepresented and misunderstood by the news media and the online chatter.
If you need links to substantiate your claims, please feel free to copy and paste the following. Help restore balance and fact to the national conversation.
Chick-Fil-A and its corporate affiliates donated millions from 2003 to 2010 to a company-controlled charity, WinShape, which launders and funnels customer money to some violent hate groups and anti-marriage organizations. Here’s the 2010 donation data:
- http://tinyurl.com/cx34kkm
The hate groups include:
Family Research Council, which supports the imprisonment of U.S. gays and the execution of foreign gays. For more information:
- 2009: http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2009/06/3141/
- 2010: http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2010/02/6613/
- 2011: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/frc-outraged-us-opposes-criminalization-homosexuality
- 2011: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/frc-pray-criminalization-homosexuality
- 2012: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/religious-right-defends-criminalization-homosexuality-judgment-paganization
Exodus International, which has a long history of abusing and molesting Christian clients and alienating families. For more information:
- http://www.truthwinsout.org/category/videos/scandals/
Chick-Fil-A also is accused of discriminating against working mothers, even when one’s husband is unemployed.
- http://www.glaad.org/blog/chick-fil-sued-gender-discrimination
Thanks Michael for shining the light on them. It is so wrong that the news media in this country never brought out these facts. I would expect it from Fox News but not NBC or MSNBC. They all twisted it into “gays not tolerating free speech!”. As we have asked before..if they donated millions to the KKK would people react the same? It’s all free speech right? They have the right to hate Black people and Jews right? Or..how about if they donated to the Westboro Baptist Church? This is America..how dare those gay lovers try and trample on our right to hate?
Contrary to what the Religious Right Noise Machine would imply, this is not and never was a free speech issue. It is a free speech issue only when the government censors a person’s speech by passing laws or arresting a person for stating something. Mr. Cathy was not threatened with arrest or censored in any way by any government agency.
However, the free speech rights of any person in the U.S. do not come with protection from having the ideas expressed by that free speech challenged, or even ridiculed. Just ask those pioneers in the LGBT rights movement: they were fired from jobs, evicted, ridiculed, and ostracized by community members. Oh, and some were committed to mental institutions suffered all manner of indignities simply because they exercised their free speech rights. Their rights were violated.
So yes, Mr. Cathy, et. al. I will challenge what you say, as is my right, and you have the right to challenge what I say. That is what free speech is all about.
You have a legal right to make an a*s of yourself and I have a legal right to point out what an a*s you are.
“…even when one’s husband is unemployed”? Do mothers only have a right to work if their husbands are unemployed? I know you’re just trying to point out exactly how dire her individual situation was, but please don’t ape the sexists’ talking points. Women have a right to seek work and be treated equally at work once they’re hired, regardless of their marital or reproductive status.
There’s another aspect to this that HuffPo reported yesterday evening that I must confess had not occurred to me: the effect this debacle is having on our LGBTQ brothers and sisters who are working for Chick-Fil-A. And there are plenty of them; at a time when jobs are still scarce in many communities, these people find themselves trapped between their disagreement with their company’s views but in need of that paycheck.
The full article is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/01/chick-fil-a-anti-gay-controversy-employees-speak-out_n_1729968.html