Chick-fil-A « Connecticut Lesbian and Gay Law

The whole Chick-Fil-A drama has really taken on a life of its own in the days since the fast food restaurant chain’s president and COO Dan Cathy appeared in The Baptist Press let the world know that his values don’t include support for same-sex marriage. For those who missed it:

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” Cathy said. “We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”

In direct opposition to the views of the chain’s president, the manager of a Chick-Fil-A franchise in Nashua, New Hampshire (the only one in that state) has pledged his support to the New Hampshire Pride Festival. According to Anthony Picolia, he is backing the LGBT event because of his own positive relationships with members of the LGBT community.

According to The Raw Story:

“It would make me sad if someone felt that they were not openly welcomed into my life or restaurant based on their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender,” Picolia explained. “Chick-fil-A at Pheasant Lane Mall has gay employees and serves gay customers with honor, dignity and respect. We also don’t discriminate in giving back to the Nashua community, donating to a wide variety of causes.”

Market research firm YouGov recently found that Chick-fil-A’s BrandIndex score had fallen 40 percent nationally since Cathy told the Baptist Press that his company was “guilty as charged” of funding groups that oppose marriage equality.

I can’t say that makes me unhappy. Oops!

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The following is an e-mail I received from Change.org on February 1st. If you’re interested in assisting them with stopping an anti-gay restuarant chain from being supported by student funds on campuses, please read on:

Are you eating at an anti-gay restaurant? If it’s Chick-fil-A, you are.

That’s why nearly 30,000 Change.org members are standing up to Chick-fil-A, the popular fast-food chicken chain with ties to some of the leading anti-gay organizations in the country, including Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage.

Because of your momentum, this people-powered campaign is making national news. On Saturday, the New York Times highlighted Change.org’s petition in an article that quickly rose to the top of the newspaper’s “Most E-mailed” list. On Sunday, ABC World News Tonight covered our campaign’s role in the Chick-fil-A controversy. And yesterday, TIME magazine exposed the controversy as well.

Now college students across the country are ramping up the pressure by launching petitions on Change.org to kick Chick-fil-A off their campus — unless the company stops supporting anti-gay groups.

Students at the University of New Orleans, the University of North Texas, Florida Gulf Coast University, and others are calling on their campuses to reject Chick-fil-A’s corporate values – which include supporting organizations that believe homosexuality can be “cured” and hosting conferences for activists fighting marriage equality.

If these students are going to win — and build a national student movement to kick Chick-fil-A off college campuses — your urgent support is critical. Click here to add your name and help them reach 50,000 combined Chick-fil-A petition signatures.

After sharing his action on Facebook, Rashad Davis, a sophomore at Florida Gulf Coast University, said that students should have a say in the type of businesses their tuition dollars support:

“We have the right to choose where our money is going. Giving money to an organization that supports anti-gay networks… is the wrong thing to do. And the more we pay them, the bigger they grow.”

Now students like Rashad have the tools to do something about it. They’ve started their own Change.org petitions to build campus support, bolstered by the amazing research that activists and bloggers like Jeremy Hooper at “Good As You” have done to expose Chick-fil-A’s WinShape Foundation.

You can super-charge these student campaigns now simply by signing your name in support. Just click the link below:

http://www.change.org/petitions/support-the-students-stand-up-against-chick-fil-as-anti-gay-agenda

Thanks for taking action to hold Chick-fil-A accountable.

Eden and the Change.org team

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