Even If You’re Not a Fan of Chick-fil-A, Please Don’t Do This

Reminds me of the latest Newsroom episode. Going from well meaning, fighting for reason and kindness to being a bully yourself.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. 

On the one hand, it would be nice if all employees of Chick-fil-A who supported gay rights would walk off the job because they didn’t agree with their employers stand, but on the other, I know that jobs are hard to come by right now and I don’t really blame any of them for not leaving.  

“legal jeopardy”?

Unless you have a law degree now Mehta, maybe you should not be giving out legal advice without a License to Practice Law.

Worrth keeping in mind that jerks coome in all political and cultural shapes and sizes. However much we might wish “the other side” had a monopoly on them, it doesn’t.

I don’t get these whole over-the-top protests (same-sex kiss day, ordering only water, berating employees, etc.).  The CEO has done NOTHING WRONG.  He isn’t breaking any laws, he isn’t saying he hates gays, he’s not discriminating against hiring gays or serving gays.  He just feels- like many people do in this country- that gay marraige is wrong.  While I disagree with his opinion, he and his company have the right to run their company according to how they interpret the Bible as long as they are not breaking any state or Federal laws.  If you disagree with him and feel strongly, don’t go there.  If you feel REALLY strongly, discuss it with your friends and family and try to persude them not to go.  But openly demonstrating and acting like douchebags?  C’mon.  It’s just feeding into the conservative fallacy that there is a some “gay agenda”.

Did the employee read the fine print when he was hired? Did it say something about how the behavior of employees, the “company officers” even when not at work and not getting paid, are to respresent the company in a way that shows only positive examples of behavior that would reflect on to what and who the compansy stands for? I know this is a far-fetched thought but, unless it is written some where, like actors that promote certain products are responsible to the company to look good in all public light, there may be a way for this fired employee to get some money lost, at least enough to live on until he finds a new job, and seeing as no one will want to hire him because of what will be said about him, chances are, he may be un-employed for a long time.

Oh, and the guy who shot and shared this video is a mental midget.

ps:

WARNING: DO NOT EAT WHILE READING OR IF U HAVE A “WEAK” STOMACH, ARE OFFENDED EASILY

my suggestion would be to do what i did once when someone somewhere at sometime irritated me (which is quite easy actually, but in this case, it was on a personal level), i went to the public bathroom shared by the person, guests and other employees, and provided a very messy message. Yes, I am that low apparently, but sometimes, doing something less illegal than say punching someone or giving out their address so others may harrass them, doing something like a spy, covertly seems just as effective in a satisfying the desire to get revenege and not break the law. I know in the end, this person would not know who the message was from, but seeing as it was a small office with just a few employees, I suspect they would all get the message regardless of what that message was. I must add, at that time I had bowel problems, big bowel problems, so this wasnt just a “drivr by” plop and run move, this was a “driving behind a garbage truck” move that could not be ignored….even more than how the lady from ‘Fatal Attraction’ meant it.

Agreed. It makes no sense to shoot the piano player.
And also agreed.  Check back in a year or so to see if the boycott is effective.

You do realise that’s a usable DNA sample right?

This whole thing is just getting ridiculous. There are people insisting that you hate gays if you eat there, and then there are my relatives on Facebook proudly posting that they still support family values and are eating there.

My old youth group leader posted this blog post on Facebook and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was actually pretty reasonable.
http://www.perrynoble.com/2012/08/01/ben-jerrys-chic-fil-a-political-correctness/ 

Obviously, I disagree with a lot of what he says, but it’s the first time I’ve *ever* seen a Christian bring up the point that gluttony is also a sin, so what makes homosexuality so terrible?

So, why are you here?

BTW, CFA donates company money to anti-gay hate groups.

 If you spend money at CFA then a small portion of the money is funneled into supporting anti-gay hate groups.  Some of us have a HUGE problem with that.

Look, I have a disagreement with the owners of Chick-Fil-A and their stance on gay marriage. I don’t have a problem with their product (which I will miss) and especially not with the employees, who are the best trained and most courteous in all the fast food industry. To lash out at the employee was uncalled for and her reaction was very professional.

I don’t have enough information to evaluate if Vante’s letting Mr. Smith go was harsh or not.  As someone who has been part of the senior leadership team on a couple of small businesses, I can honestly say I would be more than a bit shocked at this kind of behavior from an officer of the company.  

If in the ensuing conversations Mr. Smith did not show an understanding of the magnitude of the inappropriateness of his actions, letting him go might have been the only solution.

Wow, thumbs up to the cashier. I work at a menial job and I could tell you that I wouldn’t have been half as pleasant.

“I have a job to do and you’re going to just sit in my drive through and waste my time? No thanks. Have a problem? There is a customer service number you can call. I just work here, I don’t own this company. Have a nice day! *WINDOW SHUT* :D”

To be honest, one thing that has come from this has been a growing debate on the free use of such terms as ‘hate’ and ‘bigot’.  After all, can you really say something is hate just because you think it is?  Maybe.  But that doesn’t make it hate.  I’ve read more and more about that in light of this issue than I have in some time, and from some unlikely sources.  I mean, it’s easy to use ‘hate’ to shut down a debate, but at least some I’ve read and heard have started to wonder if it might be because those who are screaming hate and bigot the loudest actually feel there is a weakness in their own arguments.  Sort of like saying ‘Communist!’ in the 1950s.  It doesn’t have to be true, but it sure stops the discussion.

The use of the phrase “could be” seems to disqualify the comment as actual advice.

Also noting that a public university that accepts both state and federal funds may not be as free to fire an employee over use of speech in their private life s a private business is doesn’t strike me as unreasonable. 

No, it just means that management can monitor your behavior when you’re not on the job AND fire you for things they don’t like.  Yeah, this guy likely had a contract, but I don’t think we should be applauding this type of thing as a concept.  Corporations have too much power over us already, why give them more?

It’s a human agenda.

I was afraid to watch the video because I thought it would be just a lot of yelling and cussing and bullying. It was nothing! He just told her his feelings and drove on. “You deserve better,” was one of his feelings. 

How can you all be so sensitive? This is just free speech in the drive through. You all act like he destroyed her! This is scary because it implies that you’ll absolutely drop a load at any free speech aimed at the other side at all.  But usually you don’t!

Sure, she did great, in the face of nothing! This wasn’t bullying or an attack. You are all overreacting. 

Did you miss the part where he’s a top executive? Why are we protesting Chick-Fil-A? Because a high ranking executive shot his mouth off in public, off the job.* Executives are held to a higher standard off the job, and they ought to be. Anything they make public in that manner reflects on the company and its values and can do real damage to the company. I certainly don’t think that this kind of thing should trickle down to regular workers, but  it’s nothing new to hold top management to a higher standard of public behavior. In addition, this reflects on his judgment. How he treated the cashier is something that happened in the moment of passion and emotion, but he had plenty of time to think about what he was doing while he uploaded the video to YouTube and the ramifications it could have. Exercising poor judgment with what you expose to the internet can be a serious issue.

That said, I agree with Hemant that he ought to have been given a chance to make public amends before being fired, and I think this is pretty small beans stuff for which to fire someone.

*Yes, I know the real reason we ought to be protesting is the donations funding hate groups, but still, this was mostly an issue for a few of us who are much more serious about gay rights before. It took his public statement to make this huge.

 If you thought that Jews should not be allowed to marry, wouldnt you be a bigot? Why are you NOT a bigot if you think that gay people should not be allowed to marry?

He has not broken any laws, but that doesn’t mean he has done nothing wrong. Let’s be very clear about what he has done wrong. The fact is that it was not his statement about “Biblical marriage” that was wrong. We have long known that he donates the profits from CFA to groups promoting laws and constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Some of these groups have even lobbied to prevent any condemnation of the Ugandan bill to kill gay people. What the interview did is remove any doubt about his donations. One might have assumed that he thought he was just donating to groups dedicated to spreading Christianity, after all they do more than oppose marriage equality. He could have claimed this, the donations alone were not a slam dunk. But when he made the statements he made in recent interviews, it became clear that he strongly approves of the way these groups spend his donations to oppose gay rights.

That’s wrong, but not illegal. There’s no evidence that he’s discriminated in hiring or serving customers, so there should be no legal or government action taken against him. But why on earth should we limit our protest to not eating there and only talking among our friends? Why shouldn’t we make a statement, publicly and to the world, that we oppose the kind of bigotry he stands for and let people know what he’s doing with his profits? I support the kiss in one hundred percent. I find the free water idea amusing, if not particularly useful. But you’re right that the employees should be left alone. On the other hand, I see you said nothing about it being counter productive and obnoxious to stand in line for hours to eat a chicken sandwich and make truly hateful and bullying remarks about gay people to the employees waiting on you, some of whom are gay. The front line, minimum wage employees should be off limits. But who do you think was hurt more? This girl who suffered some embarrassment and had a very bad day with an obnoxious customer, or the gay employees who heard customers tell them all day that they were buying that chicken sandwich because they hate the gays?

tl;dr: Don’t tell people to sit down, shut up, and take it when a company is spending large sums of money to fight tooth and nail to systematically deprive them of their civil rights.

Haven’t watched the video because I’m reading this from work, so I don’t have an appropriate context for his statements, but declaring oneself to be a straight ally instead of LGBT makes the statement that this isn’t about oneself, but about supporting equal rights for all people.

Maybe, but it just didn’t feel that way to me. Especially the “no gay in me” part.

What does this whole incident teach us? Simply that people sometimes do stupid things. I doubt that Smith is actually a “heartless bully”. He was angry with C-f-A (rightfully so), got himself worked up, and foolishly lashed out… and even more foolishly recorded and posted a video of the incident. He probably feels like an idiot now, especially with all the other repercussions in his life. I think most people have taken out some sort of frustration with a company on an employee who had no control over things. It’s a natural reaction, and in most cases that employee is the only face of the company we have access to. And really, his comments weren’t all that strong… I’m sure your average C-f-A employee has dealt with worse from disgruntled customers who thought they got shorted on fries.

Don’t be a jerk. Don’t video yourself being a jerk. If your employee acts like a jerk one time, and isn’t representing your company in any way, don’t be a jerk yourself by firing him. Everybody just slow down, take a deep breath, and count to ten. Your mother’s advice was very good.

There is a world of difference between sacking someone for not following your values and sacking an executive for thinking that low-end workers at another corporation is there to take abuse for what executives at that corporation have done.

Low end workers are not there to take shit for their executives and as an executive who didn’t understand that, he should indeed be canned.

“It’s not like scientists agree in one voice that gays should be married.”

Why would “science” have anything to say on whether any particular group of people should be married?

“It would be even better if people bought food at KFC and handed it out to homeless people or something… You know, whatever Christians say Jesus would do while they go stuff themselves with some chikin.”

So, buy food from somewhere semi-healthy and hand it out to homeless people then?

Why doesn’t this blog have downvotes so we could just vote this retard off? You,sir, are a mental midget of the nth degree.

My point.  For a group that throws about such terms as hate and bigot with an assuredness that would shame a fundamentalist waving a King James Bible, you’d think there would be more objective evidence, wouldn’t you. 

So if the CFA exec had gone on the radio to say that he thought blacks shouldn’t be able to marry whites and he gave money to the KKK to further his agenda that this isn’t bigotry? Sure he hasn’t done anything illegal but come on – you don’t see the similarities?

Denying equal rights to a group based on any criteria is straight up hate.

Also, the US has a history of persecuting people who value marriage as defined in the bible – look how the US govt’ persecuted Mormons for polygamy. Sometimes “Biblical Values” need an update.

What exactly is WRONG with you? 

”
 If Chick-fil-A has a problem, this employee had nothing to do with it…”
No! This is not true. If your employer is bigoted, by remaining with them you give consent to their bigoted position. Where was the mass walkout by Chik-fil-a employees? The company should have ground to a halt by now from mass resignations. The fact that it hasn’t means the employees tacitly endorse the company’s position.

So you don’t thinks gay folks should be able to marry because of…. “non-heterosexual normality”?  Why?  What harm does it do to you? 

It’s a demographic.

We can try again with Republican if you like.

I think you need to re-read and re-intepret.  Science doesn’t get to decide who gets married.  What kind of objective evidence are you looking for?  What needs to be proved?

Or they tacitly endorse paying their bills and being able to afford food for their families.  It’s not that easy for some people to walk away from a job this day and age.

 Oh, wait…I no longer reply to your inane comments.

 That’s a huge and very unfair burden to place upon minimum wage employees!

I’ve only eaten at CFA a couple times over the last 5 years since they blew up in AZ. I don’t recall the quality being remarkably good or bad, but even if it was the best of the best, I’m fine with never eating it again over their support of anti-gay groups. By all means, if you think their food sucks, fine, but it’s not germane to the debate. I see some people relying on the “their food sucks!” line as the knife they want to twist in CFA’s side, rather than the far sharper blade of denouncing open discrimination in the political realm.

Adam Smith is my husband and father to our four young boys, two of which are adopted and special needs. He’s definitely not heartless or the multitude of other vicious labels people have applied to him. But I understand the response to a very small extent. I recognize he was rude but it’s all out of context. He’s sitting in the long CFA line to get his water and once he gets to the window he’s overwhelmed seeing all the people out in support of CFA. The crowd inside is excited to be showing support and there’s a huge line of cars. He gets discouraged and becomes more pushy than he expected. He called me immediately after and said “I regret telling her ‘how can you live with yourself’ that was unnecessarily harsh. I’ll apologize in morning when she’s not so busy.”needless to say the shit hit the fan before that opportunity. During the night someone released all of our information over the Internet and it spread like wildfire. Vante had to shut down because they were so flooded with demands for his firing. And Adam was told by Vante that in no way could he speak to the press or issue an apology. well by midday they decided to fire him, we had to change phones because of threats, his inbox at the university, Vante, and personal emails had hate mail and threats that number in the thousands, we had to move our family out of our home, find a place for our pets, and have been seeking legal counsel since.
Adam has been slaughtered. There’s not much left for us to lose and while I understand he was rude to this employee I have a difficult time reconciling the hate and vicious attacks he has received in response. At no point in that video does he raise his voice, swear, threaten, or name call. He doesn’t even hold up the drive thru line. There has been far harsher rhetoric in this CFA debate than what took place here and I’m just heartbroken that people have made an absolute villain out of him. Let me reiterate, I understand the anger at his rudeness I just don’t think that this situation deserves the response it’s received. I don’t think ANYONE deserves death threats, bullying, having their address, employment, personal finances, contact info slapped all over the Internet and social media. Where to go from here…I guess that’s to be determined.
On a side note he did state “BTW I’m not gay” to show that straight people are supportive of the LGBT community as well. Not quite the asshole he’s been made out to be.

Well said!!! When she’s hit with reality she vanishes

Guest, the gay rights movement hasn’t defined bigotry as a disagreement.  They’ll say you are free to disagree.  It’s the action of denying them rights and the benefits that go along with them based on this disagreement they have a problem with.  Bigotry by definition is when you hinder or prohibit the actions of a group of people that are different than your own group based on belief or opinion.  I don’t see how actively trying to prevent gay people from marrying can be seen as something other than bigotry.  And, at the risk of wrongly putting words in your mouth, please don’t try to turn it around and say the gay rights movement are bigots because they are intolerant of the beliefs of those who oppose them.  The gay rights movement is not trying to hinder or prohibit anyone in any way.  You are free to marry who you want, practice your religion, and so on.  Nobody’s trying to change your values.  They’re only trying to prevent you from being actively intolerant of a large group of people that have values different than yours.

What harm?  Who knows, it’s not been tried untiil recently.  If it did do harm, would it matter?

Kimpatsu, you are an ass. Not only is that an unfair burden to place on a minimum wage employee, but also the people who depend on that employee. Like the employee’s children. Should those children have to sleep in the street because Mommy/Daddy were too principled to continue to support them? Or maybe you are such an upstanding person that you would be willing to support anyone who wants to quit their job on principle.

 Really? What is one of the consenting adults is already married? What is one of the consenting adults is the child of the other? what if one of the consenting adults is the cousin of the other one? what if there were forty thousand consenting adults in a stadium that all wanted to marry each other? What if the sole reason is to get around the immigration laws?  The point is from the state’s perspective there is far more to this than just allowing the desires of consenting adults.

 Actually no.  What their record proved to me is that there are many more Christian Bigots out there willing to shell out a few dollars to support that bigotry than I would have hoped.

I think the “I don’t know how you live with yourself” part is where he went overboard.  Up until then, he was talking about the company itself but that put it into the personal attack arena.  I agree with you, though, that firing him was a little extreme… unless they are in agreement with Cathy’s anti-gay sentiments and are pissed that he doesn’t agree and made a spectacle of himself in expressing it.  Who knows.  I just stay away completely, avoiding CFA like it doesn’t exist.

Wow… one record-setting sales day based on a planned event does not a majority make, my friend.  Your glee is embarrassing.

His belief that gay marriage is wrong is fine… I don’t care that he feels that way.  My own mother feels that way.

It’s his company-sponsored support of organizations that want to ship all gays off to an island or asking the government to not support a country that wants to kill gays or other hateful, homophobic organizations that is the point here. 

He has the right to donate his company’s money however he chooses… and we have the right to not give him money to use in that manner.

But I agree that openly demonstrating and acting like this jerk did in the video is counterproductive to letting the company’s CEO know we don’t agree with him.  The individual employees are not to blame.

Yeah, it did come across a little as “protesting too much.”

He’s so upset with himself about what he said, calls you to tell you… and he still posts the video for all to see?  He could have just not done that.  No one would know.  He’d have gotten it out of his system, albeit with video, but still been just fine. 

From where I sit, he made 2 mistakes:  He made an ass of himself at the window of a fast food restaurant AND he posted video of said ass-making online.

I’m not sure which is worse, but he made his bed and then he did, indeed, lie in it.  I sincerely do not agree that the company fired him, though.  Issuing an apology and maybe losing some seniority or benefits would have been sufficient.

I’m very sorry your family is now suffering the effects of his mistakes.  It’s horrible that people are harrassing you and you’ve had to change phones.  I know it’s not easy raising special needs children in the best of times.  I hope he finds another job or is successful in asking for his previous job back so your family can succeed.

I hope he learned his lesson… by all means, say what you need to say if you choose but don’t video tape it and DON’T post it for all to see.

 So everytime he comes to a vote of the public it passes,  oh wait, it doesn’t.

Go Gettum counselor!!

By far, the largest importer of oil to the US is Canada. I wasn’t under the impression, though I could be wrong, that Canada rounded up homosexuals and imprisoned or executed them.

Ooooh, burn! You really nailed me. I’m a complete hypocrite because I don’t boycott everything there is on the planet that relates in any way to evil.

Let’s pretend there’s a serious argument in there and dissect it, shall we?

First, I don’t believe I said anything about a boycott in the entire comment you’re responding to, so your argument is a total non sequitur. I don’t expect you to read every comment in this thread, but you might have noticed that elsewhere I said I’d never eat there again, but I also said it’s pretty easy for me since I hardly eat there anyway. So yeah, it’s not much of a sacrifice for me, so what?

Second, it’s perfectly reasonable to be strategic with boycotts and only take part in them when it’s reasonable to do so. This does not make anyone a hypocrite, it makes them a reasonable person. Obviously I cannot effectively boycott gasoline as our society makes cars almost completely essential outside of a few major cities, and electric cars are rather new and prohibitively expensive. Truth be told, I do my best to use as little gasoline as possible because of the entire suite of social and environmental ills associated with it, so I drive my family of four around in a tiny economy car and attempt to use it only when necessary. Even if I did boycott gasoline, there likely would be little effect. The difficulty of it doesn’t just keep me from boycotting, it keeps most of the world from boycotting. But an easier boycott isn’t just easier for me, it’s easier for everyone, and therefore more likely to have an impact because more people are likely to be involved. The narrower the focus of your boycott, the easier participation and the higher effectiveness will be. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s strategy.

Third, oil companies are in business to make money, period. They do business the way they have to to maximize profits. Sometimes that means bad things happen with their money. The governments that have gotten rich on oil profits do bad things, I don’t like it, and I’d like it to change, but the oil companies themselves have not made a conscious decision to deny anyone their rights. In this case we have the head of a privately owned company making a conscious decision to fund efforts to restrict people’s rights. I can target that individual’s business because of how he directly uses my money. It’s a bit more murky to try to boycott oil companies because they do what they have to do to get the oil the modern world runs on, oil that happens to lie under a great many countries that have backwards, fundamentalist Islamic theocracies. It sucks, but it’s reality. Besides, if I wanted to go after oil companies for something they do with their profits, I’d be more immediately concerned with how they consciously spend them, namely to combat scientifically sound policies.

Oh, and to your other point: I was pretty clear in my language on what was being lobbied against. They lobbied to prevent condemnation of the Ugandan bill. Tell me what’s a lie about that statement? I didn’t say they lobbied in support of it, you’re changing my intentionally narrowly focused words so that you can argue against a straw man instead of against what I actually said. And frankly, whatever political BS the FRC may be using to spin their stance, if the FRC can’t get behind a resolution condemning mass murder of gay people because you’re worried about some language that you think admits that gay people are human beings, in a resolution that is all about diplomacy and does not have the force of law, then they’re disgusting bigots (but we knew that). The only apt comparison would Godwin the thread, but it would be correct. Work it out on your own.

Those aren’t justifications for being selective; they’re reasons that the two aren’t equivalent. Do try to keep up.

 The resolution- it was a lie that they lobbied against its passage. They lobbied to change some language in it.  Big difference.  they also publicly denounced the Ugandan bill.

Justify it all you want about not boycotting oil companies but short of a boycott, where is the outcry?  It doesn’t exist.

What’s amazing is that you think that’s a response. All of the information in your link was addressed in the link I gave above. Maybe you should go back to Dana Loesch’s blog for another stock response.

 Actually I did read your link and it was wrong on the facts.  I pointed them out to you in my link.  But if you need to console yourself that it is the same then go right ahead.

Free speech should not be an excuse to be rude to an employee.   The such outbreaks always make for a crappy day no matter how professional you are and no matter what you have put up with before this.   No matter what you feelings on in this instance,  I would recommend civility when dealing with a front line staff member -they have nothing to do with the company policy and are there to  make money.   If you want to yell and be a jerk find the district manager’s phone number or even better the CEO who is making the decisions. 

 Sure they are.  You need gasoline so you don’t object to the fact that oil bought from these countries is used to support regimes that actually kill and imprison homosexuals, but since you don’t need chicken, you boycott this restaurant for  holding the same position that Obama had until last May.

By the way did you vote for Obama in 2008?  If you did then you were selective then as well because his position that marriage was between a man and a woman was the same as the CEO’s.

The only thing that’s weak and shallow here is your understanding of the argument.

It’s never come to a nationwide vote so you’re not really making much of a point.

I’m interested to know if you said the same thing to evangelicals who boycotted Disney and McDonalds. (My Magic 8-ball says: “Don’t count on it.”)

Yeah, nobody is buying hybrids, or electric cars, or economy cars, or riding bicycles (which I might add was my sole form of transportation for eight years of my adult life), riding the bus,  or lobbying for alternative fuels and if they are none of them are doing it because they’re concerned about the social costs of oil addiction. Go on believing that.

But it doesn’t matter. No one can do everything, we do what we can, and what we think will be effective, and that’s all anyone can ask of anyone else. It does not make anyone a hypocrite. I’m sure your money only goes to outwardly Christian companies that behave exactly according to the Bible. Oh wait, such companies do not exist! It’s rather rich to be accuse of hypocrisy by defenders of Christian bigotry.

Oh, and I notice you’ve said nothing about marriage equality in the United States, which is still the core of this whole thing. Yeah, it’s easier to boycott him because of the public manner in which he’s donated, but find me a company that donates it’s profits to oppose gay marriage, and I’ll happily boycott it.

Id hate to work for a company that preached bigotry. Especially if I had to deal with random customers. These ceo’s have every right to express their opinions but they need to seriously think about the harm they could be putting their business, families, and employees in. This guy verbally lashes out at this employee. Thank fsm that’s all he’s done. Just think of the other types of harm that would or could be done by people being denied their basic human rights. Us primates can only be held down for so long before fighting for our rights in whatever fashion that may be. These assholes at the top need to consider the reprocussions they may be stirring.

Yes, everybody should have equal rights. These truths are held to be self-evident.

Self-righteous idiocy is unattractive no matter what side it comes from.

Riiiight, because acting like a bored toddler with a pantload is definitely effective  social activism. 

It’s not a matter of voting. This isn’t even a matter that should rightfully be subject to a vote, and in the long run, courts will invalidate any votes that violate rights (as they should).

The question was about public opinion, and in the U.S., public opinion is now slightly in favor of same-sex marriage, and is trending strongly in that direction.

Votes don’t typically track public opinion all that closely, since there are regional effects, and people who actually vote don’t usually represent an even cross-section of society.

 That’s actually quite an interesting point you bring up. I’ve been asked many times, by Christians, where do I get my morality from. They seem especially suspicious of me when they find out I don’t sleep around, I don’t steal, murder, rape or pillage. Then they tell me my position is wrong because what would happen if, say, murder, were to suddenly become the accepted norm. Because my morality isn’t grounded in a Higher Being’s Capricious Commands, I would have no choice but to start murdering people.

Your question is the perfect example of this.

Even if a majority accepts something, right and wrong are not democratic things. Some things are wrong no matter how many people accept them as the norm.

So, to answer your question, even if the vast, vast majority of Christians believed that denying gays marriage rights was the right thing to do, it would still be wrong, and I still wouldn’t follow them.

I know right from wrong. Apparently you don’t.

Also, for your information, even if the restaurant had posted record results, it doesn’t prove that it’s because every one of its customers supports its stance on this matter. It would simply mean than many people are simply unaware of the issue.

Now that I inadvertently liked your comment, I suppose I need to reply. 

Comparing the direct line between me buying a chicken sammich and Dan Cathy’s checkbook with the global petroleum industry which includes many countries, not just the gay-imprisoning ones.

Not to mention that it is a really beginner logical fallacy.  

Ooooh!   A gold medal!  Sales records /= world records.

You would think your legal counsel would have told you it’s a very bad idea to be posting additional comments to the public sphere. If you are actually his wife, that is.

troll*cough*troll

That’s part of the job.  I volunteer in a service-related position, and I get comments far worse than this all the time.  I don’t even get paid for it.  It’s part of the role. 

Are you tenured, kimpatsu, that you can afford to preach to others like this? Because I have to assume you practice what you preach, yes?

Do you have kids to feed, a mortgage or rent to pay, elderly parents to care for? We all do things we’d rather not so that we can avoid standing in line at the food bank.

I suggest a long, hard look at your own behaviours and privilege before you go spouting off about how people in minimum-wage jobs should take any kind of stand.

Religion or lack thereof is NEVER an excuse to be an asshole.

There’s something seriously wrong with putting a civil rights decision up to public vote. 

Yeah, actually, the majority of the country DOES agree with us on gay marriage. Repeated polls have shown that recently. Lying to a bunch of low IQ Bible Belters to get them to go buy food on a certain day doesn’t disprove that.

But that doesn’t matter. Since when were peoples’ rights voted on by the majority? If you’re honestly okay with that, you’d best hope that Christianity never becomes the minority, because this country is fast starting to hate ya’lls guts. If we start voting on what you get to do, you’ll end up getting a taste of the pain you’ve so gleefully inflicted on gays and lesbians.

Yes it is. That in no way justifies the behavior of customers who act that way. This is not a case of the employee complaining she is being treated unfairly. This is a case of outside observers viewing the behavior of the customer and judging it to be unacceptable. You can disagree, of course, but it does seem to be a rough consensus.  (For my part, I’m right now in a location where I am not free to view the video, so I have no idea where on the scale of asshat customer stunts this one happens to fall, so I have no opinion on the incident itself as of yet.)

 Thank you. More of this, please. We know that two wrongs don’t make a right, and neither do a whole bunch of them. SMH.

>  even if the restaurant had posted record results, it doesn’t prove that
it’s because every one of its customers supports its stance on this
matter.

Although, to be honest, I would imagine that most of them do, what with huge lines to get some righteous godly gay-free chikin.

Given that chick-fil-a donated money to a group that tried to stop congress from condemning the kill the gays bill in Uganda you may need to rework your argument.

Hey, if you want to change this argument from “CFA is against gay marriage” to “CFA supports killing gays in Uganda” then go for it.

I think it will be an uphill battle for you.
Besides, if that were the case, then the pro-gay marriage crowd has really erred here.  A vast majority of those at CFA the other day were live and let live folks like me, but see the acts of a few big city mayors as an attack on live and let live.

However, those live and let live folks like me would not stand for supporting killing gays in Uganda or anywhere else.

The message should have been, “CFA supports killing gays in Uganda.”

But the message has been and remains, “CFA is a bunch of bigots because they oppose gay marriage.”

So, I say make your case, if you have one.

Actually the opposition to CFA has been because of it’s donations to anti-gay groups, and it’s opposition to gay marriage. It’s not an either-or issue.

You suggested people who boycott CFA should go to countries where gay people are jailed and killed to see what real persecution looks like. You’re apparently ignorant of the fact CFA donates money to organizations that promote or refuse to condemn that kind of persecution. 

Maybe you and all the live and let live folks should try learning what people were objecting to in the first place, rather than buy a sandwich to spite people promoting gay rights.

I said:

chick-fil-a donated money to a group that tried to stop congress from condemning the kill the gays bill in Uganda 

Which is not in consistent with what I said in my response. CFA donated money to Exodus International participated in an conference in Uganda that lead to the bill being proposed, and the Family Research Council that lobbied against the congressional resolution mentioned above.

Or maybe the GLBTQFAWILO crowd should work on their message….

They have to battle selective listening, among other things.

you guys are losing a vast population of people who would normally be on your side 

Somehow I doubt you’re among them.

 Oh my, yes. I do not understand all of this hoopla over their waffle fries. They’re bland, underseasoned and just plain flavorless.

That type of advice would be good most of the time in our society today, and it applies to more than this instance.

 Same in AZ – at will employment.

The vote is a valid measure of public opinion and certainly bot subject to the bias of a poll.

Can you really not read? The link to your gay website mischaracterized their efforts when they took place and how muchnitvwas. Just like your original post. But f ignoring the truth wors for you go right ahead.

He could have just said, “BTW, I’m getting my free water because of your corporation’s promotion of oppression of gay people, which I’m sure you have nothing to do with, but that’s why I’m here.” Then, he’s just making the workers aware of his position rather than being a Real Life Troll.

“Did those people in the March on Washington in 1963 actually believe a majority of people agreed with them? Did fire hoses and police dogs not prove that blacks don’t have as many followers as you think?”

-Nikki Gray, fort-nine years ago

Who are you talking to? Have you finally gotten lonely and started talking to the only person who cares enough to listen to your inane ramblings?

“But the right of a society to redefine a civil institution is not the same as an individual or group right to redefine it.”
Was it then not right for our society to redefine “landowner” to include people other than white males?

Of course it was right.

Just as it was wrong for our society, via the Taney court, to tell Dred Scott he was still a slave. 

So what? 

Society gets it right sometimes and gets it wrong sometimes. 

My point is that individuals and activist groups do not have thre right to redefine words and institutions according to their desires, but they must participate in the larger political process within society.

All I know is, nobody’s rounded me up yet, despite the fact that I called attention to myself by having a nice legal same-sex marriage with all the trimmings nine years ago.

Nonsense. Polls are much more accurate in determining public opinion. It is well known that different groups within society have more or less of a tendency to vote. A vote typically under represents younger voters, and under reflects lower income voters.

A properly constructed poll cuts across all of society… unlike an election, which may have a small turnout, with the actual voters depending on many factors, including the issues on the ballot.

Marriage laws also once said that interracial marriage was illegal.

Guess how that changed? Sure as hell not by popular vote.

Or do  you think we went about that the wrong way? Should it have been kept to a popular, festering as a silly illegality for years before the bigots finally lightened up?

Yes, but you see, they’re WAFFLE shaped.

Seriously, that’s why people get so happy over them.  Different apparently equals better when it comes to poorly cooked potato product.

Interracial marriage didn’t receive majority support in this country until 1991.

I’ve seen various speculations, and I’d have to say that that version ‘fits’, in that it makes sense (to me).  It’s taking FRC’s word for their intent, but I’m not surprised to see them a) not wanting the death penalty for (even ‘aggravated’) homosexuality anywhere and b) not wanting “homosexuality is a basic human right” to be in any US legal language anywhere.

I still don’t ‘like’ them, but they’re not calling for gay people to be killed.  There are enough crazy pastors who want to stick gay people on concentration camps that I don’t think we need to make up our own crazy.

The only thing that is ‘new’ (and really not all that new anymore) is giving same sex marriages all the same legal rights as opposite sex marriages.  That’s it.  Gay people have always had committed relationships.

Hey, letting black people marry white people could have been a harm, right?

He sounds like such a douche… and I bet he went home really pleased with himself because he’d just gone out of his way to show how hip and open-minded and accepting he was… by being a douche.

What’s polite about “You should be ashamed to work here”? Watch that young woman’s face when he said that. He was just trying to humiliate her. Then he put it up on the Internet. Shame on you.

That was a lot milder than I expected. Not sure why he thinks he can disrupt a business in that way which I thought was the worse offense. He wasn’t a legitimate customer. It made people feel entitled to bother him at his place of business about his political views. Tit for tat. Of course this effected his place of business so they fired him. I don’t think they would have cared about private rudeness if it hadn’t impacted them, and had been at a private personal level, like asking a OWS person how they could live with themselves occupying a park. It also showed he had no conception of the role employees play which isn’t a good characteristic for a manager.

I really don’t understand how Rahm Emannuel thinks he has the right as a government official to violate the rights of others who have differing political views. By blocking the building of that Chick-Fil-A he violated many people’s rights to free association, free trade, and free speech. I believe that was the main reason so many supported them on Chick-Fil-A day. I was considering supporting them too even though I disagree with them about gay marriage. I think the rights violated by Rahm are far more important than the privileges handed out for government recognized marriages.

I’m not convinced either by Hemant’s argument that you must be a bigot to oppose gay marriage. Many are bigots but Hemant failed to be rigourus enough to cover all the bases. For example his mistake in thinking a government recognized marriage was a right. He might be able to make the argument without relying on this mistake but he didn’t.

He also needs to cover all possible reasons for being opposed and he didn’t do that. I think he recognized this because he made the further argument that even if bigot was too harsh well tough luck you are advocating the violation of others rights. Not sure why calling a bigot a bigot would be too harsh.

You seem to think that I’m suggesting that this should be decided by popular vote.  That is not the case.

As an aside I would note that removing any legal restrictions on interracial marriage was not a redefinition of marriage, but an acknowledgment that a person’s humanity is not a function or their race.  A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, regardless of the skin color involved.

Always remember that silence gives assent. Whatever happened to unionized protests?

Put another way, if a company came out in favour of discrimination against YOU, wouldn’t you want me, as an employee of that company, to make the group’s displeasure known?
The fact that you said “her bills” instead of “their bills” is revealing. Don’t you think the employees should walk out en masse, or do you regard each man as an island, contra Donne?

Society can’t change unless it’s approved by the majority? Give me a break.

Reposting fresh to avoid text squish.

@d639d9b8be7df2b1cfa5fc4b67090b12:disqus 
You do realize that at one point in American history, it seemed as if segregation would never be defeated, but that because people had the courage and fortitude to stand up and protest, it has been completely overthrown as an acceptable way of life?

It will take time, but those who support equal rights for gays are going to win the war.  Chick-fil-A may have won the battle this week, but Cathy’s stance places him on the wrong side of history.

Don’t gloat too much.

So now we’re calling people derogatory names?  Real mature there, Nikki.  I’m sure Chick-fil-A has lost many customers because of Cathy’s stance. 

Why did your husband choose to video himself and then post on Youtube?  What response was he expecting?  Does he not understand that Rightwingers who are opposed to gay rights watch Youtube too?

I’m very sorry that you and your family are suffering because of your husband’s actions.  You should not be getting death threats.  I don’t understand why cowardly people make anonymous death threats.  Hopefully, the police can help you catch some of these cowards.

I hope your husband can find a new job (I don’t believe he should have been fired since his misconduct occured away from work on his own free time).  And, I hope your family is left in peace.

Now that your husband has apologized, I think people should move on.  He’s acknowledged that his behavior was improper and has apologized to the employee.  Enough now.

Good luck to you.

@twitter-479691717:disqus 
You made me laugh!

Silly argument.  Buying gas doesn’t equate to killing homosexuals/women since there are many countries in OPEC which don’t kill homosexuals/women.
Also, buying gas is not a choice if you have a car that runs by gas.  You also buy gas, I assume.  Are you killing gays/homosexuals also?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vgqJCO-5t6w/UB1CAlpktlI/AAAAAAAAAU8/3Jh4IhU8Z0o/s1600/The+Struggle.jpg

So in other words, either bigots, idiots, or hypocrites (or some permutation of these).

Who cares if a company has one huge sales day? It means nothing if it’s not consistent. How many of those people have ever eaten there before? How many will go back? Those are the answers that will matter… to Chick-Fil-A. 

The number of bigots willing to eat fried chicken sandwiches is not what determines the laws of our land nor what is right or wrong. 

Traditional definition of marriage?

Which one is that? There seem to be so many of them, most barely going back more than a few centuries, if that.

Tell that to the Supreme Court who made the decision in Loving v. Virginia.

the current laws in the u.s. in regards to marriage do not apply equally to all. Men are allowed to married women, but women are not allowed to marry women. Women are allowed to marry men, but men are not allowed to marry men. This is not laws being applied equally. 

I doubt it. I would never push for any legal or social policy that limited the rights of anybody in that society, unless that limitation was required to balance some other right that I considered more important. Since same-sex marriage does not stand in opposition to any rights, no matter how trivial, there’s absolutely no moral basis to oppose it.

It is not reasonable or moral to oppose same sex marriage. People have the right to do so, but in my eyes that makes them bad people.

Yes, I just love it when privileged people let us “others” know that we should be grateful for the few token rights tossed to us. I’m *totes* glad it’s not legal for people to beat me to death or try to “corrective” rape me. I guess this means I have it all and it would just be too much to give me complete equality under the law. You know what, I’m going to use this handy time machine to go back to the 1960’s so MLK jr. can hear this wonderful news too.

So, let’s change it to “muslims” or “christians” shouldn’t be allowed to get married. Both of those labels are religions, something people (technically) choose. Is that statement bigoted?

In other words that have nothing to do with what I said, sure.

I just watched it, and I don’t think he was particularly hateful toward her. The only part where I cringed was when he said “I don’t know how you can live with yourself.” I’m a server and I deal with way more hateful comments from people over very petty issues on a daily basis. None of them have ever (to my knowledge) been fired–even the ones who are their on a business meeting with their employees/employer. 

Except you apparently missed a certain salient point.  No government entity has proclaimed publically the intent to punish Disney or McDonalds because of political disagreement.

In projecting your own hatred and bigotry onto others you apparently are blind to the fact that most of these people really don’t like having bigotted jackwagons tell lies about them while government officials abuse their office.

I’ve said it before, gays and atheists are the last people who should be happy about the actions of the mayors of Boston, Chicago, the alderman dude in Chicago, and the speaker on the NYC council.  I believe the mayor of San Francisco got in on the act too.  One day that ill wind will blow your way and as a minority you have fewer places to find shelter.

I would never have gone to Chick-fil-A if this were simply over the gay marriage fight and some demonstrators and boycotters.  Neither would many of those who did show up Wednesday.

But when government officials of major cities with national exposure proclaim they are going to punish businesses (ESPECIALLY in this economy) then people are gonna come out in droves.

And they did.

Well, they did on Wednesday.  Not so much on Friday.

Clearly the guy was a jerk, but do we really want to be running to teacher (employer) every time someone misbehaves? He didn’t do this in his capacity as CFO, he didn’t mention his employer; why bring the employer into it at all? What’s next, people getting fired for cutting in line at the checkout?

Oh, it certainly could have been much much worse. I work in a service industry too, and have personally experienced nastier characters. I think where this departs from those dime-a-dozen incidents is that this guy went the extra step and uploaded his deed to the web for all to see. 

Yeah!  Calling people names is such FUN!  Wheeeeee…!!

I know you think that’s what you were doing. Because YOU’RE an idiot.

I’d agree with you if he were a wage employee, but he wasn’t. He was a contract employee (and an executive officer atop that). Generally speaking, such contracts contain morals clauses that essentially say “don’t bring disrepute upon the company, or we reserve the right to fire you”. It has very little to do with policing behavior and much more to do with damage control and business reputation, which the CEO of a company (which he was) is *directly* responsible for.

Another substanceless reply from a troll. You and JimTreacher can hang out together under the bridge.

I’m not sure if the identity of the guy was sussed out by crowd-sourcing or by traditional media investigation, but either way…

If there is an institution that should be the guardian of free speech more than any other, surely that is the press?

…freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from the lateral consequences of that speech. It *only* means freedom from state action against a speaker or their speech. It is a right that only restrains the government, not private actors.

Ha! 

It never ceases to amaze me how little self-reflective sence of irony is demonstrated by folks like you.

You should be in the film business; you’re a natural projectionist.

But as a matter of principle, the press has a moral obligation to ensure that public discourse is free and unfettered, above and beyond any constitutional protections.

Not when it conflicts with their first duty, which is to report on incidents of concern with promptness and accuracy.

You’re correct to a point. If we develop a culture whereby the social consequences of speaking out are sufficiently severe (such as losing one’s job) then effectively we have lost that freedom. 

But this is an unusual circumstance, which obtained in part only because of two things the person at issue did of his own free will. First, he voluntarily signed an employment contract (to be the head of a company no less) that comes with duties such as maintaining the dignity of that company in the public eye. That certainly happened prior to the incident at issue. Second, he intentionally publicized the incident at issue by uploading it, basically abandoning any protection of natural anonymity he might have otherwise enjoyed. 

I think it is problematic to compare this situation to the plight, if you will, of the average employee in this situation. If they had done neither of these things, the consequence would likely not be the same.

 Freedom of speech is fundamental to the operation of a free society. 

True, but freedom of speech unfettered by comity turns into talk-show trash. Part of what makes freedom of speech important is the frank and effective exchange of ideas, which generally requires the participants of speech to not act like risible dicks. This person was not expanding the horizons of discourse; he was just mean to a wage worker who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But when they included an uninvolved third party, in a position of power over the guy, they crossed a line.

They didn’t involve the third party. The third party involved themselves. They could have chosen not to act. They did so, out of their (legal, fiduciary) duty to protect the interests of the company. Many companies in their situation would have reacted differently; if I were on the board of such a company, I would have preferred a public mea culpa over a firing, but then again I’m not the person who is legally responsible for the outcome of the public fallout to that particular company. They are entitled to protect their interest, a freedom as important as the freedom to speak one’s mind for the continuity and effectiveness of our society’s systems.

Look, I’m not insensitive to the notion that private power can be coercive and there are worrying trends amongst corporations prioritizing a CYA mentality over slightly more difficult but ultimately more equitable solutions. I wish that people in such positions were more cognizant of the personal consequences of their decisions and weighed those factors more heavily when they make these choices. But my empathy (and yours)  has to be weighed against the consequences to these people making the wrong call and dragging a company down, which ultimately employs many more people than the one ass whose intemperance dragged them into the limelight. I don’t envy their decisions in these cases and look askance at easy moral opprobrium directed their way.

It’s no fun when people return your insults, is it? Awww.

You are a hypocrite then.

The word “hypocrite” has joined “homophobe” and “racist” in having been so abused in usage as to no longer have any real meaning.

The charge against one’s character, that once produced such clutching of pearls and gnashing of teeth, now produces little more than yawns, if that, from those for whom the charge is meant to be devestating.

Cry wolf and let slip the words of bore.

I’m not hurt by insults, not in the least. But thank you sooo much for your concern.

“Cry wolf and let slip the words of bore.”

Ohh, that’s good!  That yours?

You’re welcome.

Why? Rw is also handing you your ass on a platter!