What I think:

A student’s perspective on Chick-fil-A

With the recent petition to remove Chick-fil-A from our campus, I decided it was time to beg you not to let it leave.  Chick-fil-A serves delicious food, and there’s no denying that. As a practicing Catholic, I certainly agree with Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s stance on marriage equality.  Cathy never said he hated homosexuals. He never said he wouldn’t hire homosexuals as employees. He never said he wouldn’t serve homosexuals as customers – he simply stated what any Southern Baptist man, or one of most Christian denominations, believes: Homosexuality isn’t right in the eyes of God.

But that doesn’t get you off the hook if you’re straight.  Pre-marital sex is just as sinful as sex of the homosexual variety, and so is saying “Mother of God” when Chick-Fil-A is kicked off of your campus and replaced with a Gap store.  But I digress.

There were a few things that shocked me in light of the uproar concerning Cathy’s religious views and Chick-fil-A’s so-called agenda of “hate and bigotry”.  First of all, the fast food chain’s hateful agenda builds orphans homes, offers camps for troubled children, hands out $6.7 million in scholarships each year and supports struggling married couples in refocusing their lives.  Chick-fil-A’s donations are being used to strengthen married heterosexual couples and to help children from preschool to college.

What the opposition most likely doesn’t know is that Chick-fil-A donates primarily to WinShape, which in turn donates to other foundations at their discretion. The most incriminating of these donations goes to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  I don’t know if you were in FCA in high school, but it doesn’t take more than five minutes on their website to gather that they are not a hateful organization.  Frankly, Christian organizations that don’t support marriage equality have better things to focus on than trying to limit the rights of anyone, let alone anyone who would put up such a fight as the gay community.  I’ll hand it to them – the homosexual community doesn’t have an ounce of quit in them.

Secondly, it’s unconstitutional for the mayors of Boston and Chicago to ban a company from their city on grounds of their political or religious views.  I think freedom of speech and religion made the top five in the Bill of Rights, maybe even the First Amendment to the Constitution.  But I suppose I’ll stop before I come across as a hateful bigot.

But what blew my mind more than anything here, at our college, was the petition.  By allowing Chick-fil-A to stay at Georgia College, we aren’t giving anyone reason to doubt the way we operate as a university, and we aren’t tolerating hate in the form of a sandwich.  By allowing Chick-fil-A to stay on our campus, we’re giving people reason to believe our campus has spectacular taste in fried chicken restaurants.  It’s just food.  As for me and my home, we will eat at Chick-fil-A just as much as we always have.

Posted by Nick Landon on Sep 6 2012. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.