Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Chick-fil-A Won't Go Away

So, in a brilliant stroke of marketing, the National Organization for Marriage, NOM and Chick-fil-a are capitalizing on the success of "Chick-fil-a Appreciation Day" by making it into a weekly event. It's a neat trick really. Chick-fil-a misses out on the Sunday dining crowd because of their policy of being closed on Sundays but what is the second largest day that folks, especially evangelicals, are likely to be looking for a quick meal before church? Wednesday of course. I find it highly co-incidental that both the initial "Appreciation Day" and the weekly call to action land on Wednesdays. I'm sure that my conservative childhood church wasn't the only one who got chicken for their youth (or other demographic) on August 1st. Call me cynical but it seems more than a bit convenient that NOM has long been one of the direct beneficiaries of Chick-fil-a's donations and given that this is becoming a marketing ploy makes it seem more than a little bit self serving.

It was those donations, and not the ill advised public statements made by Dan Cathy, that were the root of the LGBT boycott in the first place. That has consistently been lost in all the pseudo coverage of this by the media.

Honestly it saddened me when I confirmed the truth of the matter. I have a ton of friends who grew up working at Chick-fil-a. I had considered them for my young daughter's first job. She'll be fifteen in a matter of weeks and of course she wants a car someday soon. She's intimidated by small children so babysitting is out. Chick-fil-a hires 15 year olds and from the experience of my young friends, some who have risen to management levels within the company, it can be a great place to work. I share some of the basic values that adorn the walls. As I am typing this I have open in my facebook a photograph of one of my young friends, a counselor at Winshape camp. These are GREAT young people; sweet, earnest, honest kids. I love them. That makes all this really hard for me.

It would be easy if I could simply vilify Chick-fil-a. It's always easy to vilify the other isn't it? But I can't. I know and love people on both sides of this issue. Its what took me so long to "pick a side" even though I have been an advocate for marriage equality for several years now. I don't want a boycott to harm my young friends who depend upon Chick-fil-a to pay their college bills, to raise their kids, to buy their first cars.

Ultimately though I can no longer stomach the idea of my dollars going to oppose the full equality of my other young friends. The ones who could be fired from their jobs simply because of who they love. The ones who have to jump through insanely complicated hoops to insure that they have the legal right to make medical decisions for their partners, to raise their children, to retain their joint property in the event of their partner's death...rights we have automatically when we sign our marriage licenses. The ones who, having heard over and over and over again that they are an abomination because of who they love, are taking their own lives in droves. The ones who, in part because of the messages being preached by Focus on the Family (another group Chick-fil-a donates heavily to), find themselves on the streets in the name of "tough love" when they gather the courage to come out to their families.

So I will continue to avoid supplying Chick-fil-a with any of my money but I wonder if, going forward, it might be worth our time to grab a case of bottled water and go stand online on Wednesdays (assuming the crowds on the 1st repeat) and attempt to dialogue with the "other"...because clearly this issue isn't going away.


Thursday, August 9, 2012

Wow...it's been awhile

I can't believe it's been more than a year since any of us last blogged here. I can't speak for the rest of the un-con crew but the last year has been insane and I have been battling the beast that is depression and writing just took energy and time that I didn't have. I don't even know where to begin, the Chick-fil-a debacle, the mosque burning, the shooting at the Sikh temple, the massacre at the opening of  The Dark Knight Rises? The latent fundamentalist that still lives somewhere deep within me looks at that list and starts digging through boxes for my dusty old copies of Late Great Planet Earth.

Was I the only one that grew up believing that the world was going to end and the Russians were the anti-Christ and one day there would be battle in the middle east at a place that used to be called Armaggedon and they would kill us all? Is it just me or is strange to anyone else that the last country to be involved in major wars in that region is the good old USA? Could it be, as the great philosopher Pogo has said, "We have met the enemy...and he is us"?

We seem so very good at finding an enemy, some person or group to scapegoat or blame for the downfall of society. In just my fairly brief 44 year lifetime it has been:
  1. The Commies
  2. The Hippies
  3. The Blacks
  4. The Muslims
  5. The Gays
I'm sure there are some I've missed but those are the big five that I've observed. And none of those has brought about the downfall of society. But boy have we shown, as people who call ourselves Christians, that we completely do not get the teachings of our Christ.

I've harped on this before. I'll probably harp on it a lot more in the days and weeks and years to come. It's important to me that the church "gets it" and someone has to keep being that voice crying in the wilderness calling us back to the core. To LOVE.

Love - what disciples are supposed to be known by
Love - what we are to do to our enemies
Love - what we are supposed to have for our neighbors
Love - what we are supposed to give to one another

How much clearer can it be?

Now there remain three things: Faith, Hope and Love but the greatest of these is LOVE.