The Chick-Fil-A Imbroglio

To be honest, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've eaten a Chick-Fil-A. OK, maybe two hands because there was one in the Food Court of the Centennial Student Union at Minnesota State Mankato, but it's not often. It's just not my go-to culinary spot because there's not exactly tons of 'em lining the streets of Iowa or Minnesota. Their chicken is decent enough, their nuggets probably more real than anything McDonald's or the other fast food chains churn out and despite the waffle fries and the weirdness (at least to me, it may be perfectly normal to everyone else) of putting pickles on their chicken sandwiches and the mild irritation of them being closed on Sunday (because on those rare occasions I'm at the Coral Ridge Mall, I usually find myself thinking 'hey, a chicken sandwich sounds good' only to find Chick-Fil-A closed. Because it's Sunday) I'm pretty indifferent to the chain as a whole.

So it wasn't that much of a galloping shock to find out that Chick-Fil-A's President wasn't a huge fan of gay marriage. (I mean, go to a Chick-Fil-A and they've pretty much got it spelled out in BIG, BOLD letters that this a God-fearing, Jesus loving company that's closed on Sundays. Did people really think they'd be down with gay marriage?) What I do want to do though is find the idiot journalist that broke this apparent story and slap them. Hard.

I'd really like to be liberal sometimes. By and large, I'm down with the notion of the government staying the hell out of everybody's pants and/or bedrooms. I think we need to reform Social Security, not privatize it and actually preserve a social safety net of some kind for the 21st Century. I believe taxes are inevitable and we need a tax system that makes everybody pay something.

But damn, do liberals in this country make it hard sometimes.

This Chick-Fil-A foolishness is the type of thing that turns elections. And that's what's making me crazy about the whole damn thing. Remember 2004 when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom started issuing marriage licenses in defiance of state law? President Bush hadn't said a damn thing about it before then. Newsom gave him an opening, he ran with it and at a 2:00 PM on Election Day when I was pulling into the First Avenue Hy-Vee Parking lot it was granola eating, hippie loving, latte sipping, liberal as you can get NPR that announced that early exit polling showed that 'moral values/social issues' were what people were voting on. At that point, I knew Kerry was toast. And I was right.

The classic liberal mistake with the Chick-Fil-A imbroglio isn't objecting to Chick-Fil-A's position. That's a perfectly reasonable objection to make. It's the suggestions that Chick-Fil-A should be banned or prevented from setting up shop in your town because of it's President's shitty opinion. I hate to say it but penalizing people for having opinions is just one stop on the happy little road to gold stars, pink triangles and all of us marching in very straight lines. It's fascism, wrapped up in the neat little happy bow of 'tolerance' and 'political correctness.'

And that's why people are jamming into Chick-Fil-A. Do I think they all hate gay people? No. (Some of the more odious ones, might, I suppose.) But gay marriage isn't going to be suddenly accepted and not controversial because the elitist liberals of America say so. A lot of people disagree with it. (I don't- I'm all for it.) And when the President of Chick-Fil-A gets vilified for having the same opinion, they feel like they're being vilified too. At the end of the day, nobody should be vilified for having an opinion. Even a shitty one. (And in those voting booths this November, people aren't going to be just thinking about the big issues. They're going to be thinking about gas prices, food prices and remembering when the snotty media elites vilified them for having an opinion. And then they're going to vote for Romney.)

Chick-Fil-A isn't refusing to serve gays and lesbians. They're shareholders or franchise owners may not even agree with the position of their President. The guy who runs the joint has a shitty opinion. If you don't agree with it, don't eat there. That's the glorious thing about capitalism. If enough people stayed away to affect their bottom line, they might well be forced to reconsider their position or go out of business all together. And that's how you win that argument.

P.S. This sort of idiocy isn't just a liberal problem either. Behold Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania that apparently compared free birth control to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. America, when the 50% of you that are just beyond caring about politics decide to care, look me up and we'll have a Revolution to replace the idiots on both sides of the aisle. All of them.