Obligatory Chick-Fil-A Post

Wrote a lot of this a week or so ago, when I was still reeling from all that Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day horseshit.

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Resources

If anybody else is still having these terrible terrible discussions, here are some resources that you might find helpful.

Specific and easily-linkable information on Chick-Fil-A's donation history.

Great rundown from ThinkProgress.org that I like because it addresses the problems with (and harm caused by) falsely casting this as a First Amendment issue.

Tired of having this cast as a dispute between two equally-unreasonable and extreme camps of zealots? Here, drop this link before you smash your head against that brick wall again.

JP Brammer's Final Rant on Chick-Fil-A, full of justified anger over very real harm.

It’s not about Dan Cathy’s opinion - which I do not give a flying fuck about - it’s about the fact that Chick-Fil-A donated over $5 million to anti-gay hate groups. Hate groups which have been listed next to the KKK, hate groups which try to cure gay people like it’s a disease, and hate groups that have disseminated information claiming that gay people are pedophiles. (...)

Let me tell you this. Agreeing to disagree is a luxury I can’t afford because that’s something you can only do with an equal. And, if you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of dealing with some major inequalities here. So when you tell me that I have to deal with the bullshit that society and religion sends my way on a daily basis, and that I have to do it with a smile on my face, then don’t be surprised when I tell you to kindly fuck off.

“But you’ll never get rights that way. You attract more flies with honey than-” oh shut the fuck up. Like you care about my rights.

Then, for a slightly different tactic, Aesop to the Right: Why I Believe Bristol Palin, one of those rare potentially bridge-building essays which does that difficult job without compromising on the values at stake here. This is a keeper any time someone says, "I don't have a problem with LGBT people. I just believe that they're definitionally excluded from certain rights because of the way I have chosen to define the group of people eligible for those rights. But I love my gay friends!"

Some people turn supremacy into an over-arching philosophy. For most, it’s just a habit of mind. As a habit of mind, supremacist ideas can spring up in anyone. Being liberal doesn’t make you immune. Being gay doesn’t make you immune. Being a minority doesn’t make you immune.

You don’t have to hate people to feel innately superior to them. After all, what kind of threat are your inferiors to you? You may be annoyed by them, from time to time, or you may even like them. You can even have so much affection for them that you might call that affection love.

Because they don’t have to be said in anger, supremacist statements aren’t only the purview of the “God Hates Fags” crowd. The dangerous thing about a supremacist point of view is that it can accompany even warm affection.

Now understand: I’m not saying you’re a supremacist, but your letter, polite as it is, does betray a somewhat a supremacist point of view.

Finally, Snopes.com on the Chick-Fil-A marriage equality issue.

Also! For those of you on LJ and DW who might want to link this, the entry on DoaW is here. Please feel free to leave links to more resources in the comments on DoaW so that anybody who needs them won't have to depend only on what I happened to have stashed in my browser history when I posted this.