I’m mining through my Google Reader and my alerts trying to find the most interesting things people have said about the whole Chick-Fil-A/Diabetes Appreciation Day and the events that led up to it, and I’m particularly enjoying this piece by Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon. One thing she pulls out of the event is that, though the lines of bigots coming out of Chick-Fil-A stores were unsightly, it’s notable that the underbelly of our society, as she calls it, doesn’t really have the courage to protest the way they used to:
So apparently there were lines out the door of bigots at Chick-Fil-A yesterday for No Homo Day, or whatever they call it, so that bitter wingnuts can eat bland fast food in the general direction of the queers and their supporters. In a sense, this is progress. The bigots used to line up at spit on school children trying to enter newly integrated schools, but now they don’t even have courage enough for that, so instead they passive-aggressively eat fried chicken at the liberals in hopes that pisses us off. Meanwhile, we’re taking our fancy new Affordable Care Act benefits and throwing in some extra bouts of sexual intercourse in defiance of them. As the two camps divide further into Team Stuff Your Face With Crap and Team F**king Is Fun, I have to imagine the gulf between high divorce rate red states and low divorce blue states will only increase.
She only goes further from there, and she really captures some of the differences between Their Side and Our Side. Not that there aren’t those on Our Side with proverbial sticks where the sun don’t shine, it really is the defining characteristic of the type of people who would stand in line for four hours waiting for disgusting food just so they can show their hatred for gays with as little risk as possible.
Read all of it.
The one thing you have wrong is that their food is good, … way better than your average fast food. Their food is good, their service is excellent, and they genuinely care about the customer. It’s tough because I bet that almost all employees and management are good people and not bigots. Also the people waiting in line are mostly composed of people that support traditional marriage, period. They likely don’t know how bigoted Cathy is.The question I would have is that if you knew that ultimately your money would go towards anti-gay hate groups would you still support that company even if it creates jobs for people that have no inkling of being bigoted towards gays or anyone else for that matter?? To group all these people as bigots is misguided and inaccurate IMO. People think it’s a free speech issue but it isn’t.
I don’t care for their food. But you are correct Tomc, in that they do have a large following that worships their food.
Hey, we never said fundies can’t cook.
There is obviously a call for chicken, regardless of the politics. I deeply appreciate the Colonel’s clarion call – but – it isn’t the same. I’m not impressed by Chick fil a food – but many are. So doesn’t it seem as if some of the response to this is appropriately a chicken food chain with at least as good and substantively the same food opening in the blue states?
Reyn
This whole thing is absurd. The owner can do what her WANTS with HIS money. Don’t like his attitude/beliefs? He was called out on that. Don’t want to eat there? Then don’t. But to blow this up into a “make gay people look ridiculous across the nation and in all the news” thing was absurd.
I’m not going to eat there and I’m going to encourage my friends and family not to eat there. But that’s pretty much where I think we should stop. Really, we can’t stop the idiot CFO from talking and any more action against it is just going to prolong this whole stupid thing. I think it’s just time to stop.