…which Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber clearly lacks:
Sure, massive public displays of prejudice are always disappointing. But let’s look at the bigger picture. Set gay rights back 20 years? Really, what did Chickenpalooza ’12 actually accomplish?
– Showed us how many people don’t prioritize LGBT equality at all, fail to comprehend what “freedom of speech” means, and will probably never understand or accept people like us.
Yeah, that’s pretty harsh. But how about everything the chicken controversy didn’t do? For instance, it didn’t…
– Revoke same-sex marriage in Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico City, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Iowa, Vermont and Connecticut.
– Revoke civil unions in Ireland, Lichtenstein, Hungary, Austria, Colombia, Ecuador, Switzerland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom*, Luxembourg, Finland, Germany, France, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, New Jersey and Maine.
– Re-criminalize homosexuality in Mozambique, Fiji, India, Nicaragua, Panama, Nepal, Tokelau, Puerto Rico, Cape Verde, Marshall Islands, San Marino, Iraq, China, Mongolia, Romania, Costa Rica, Armenia, the United States, Azerbaijan, Gabon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Southern Cyprus, Tajikistan, Ecuador, Tasmania, Macedonia, Macau, Albania, Moldova, Bermuda, Germany, Serbia, Belarus, Gibraltar, Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Russia.
– Re-ban gay people from the military in the United States, Serbia, Argentina, the Philippines, Uruguay, Russia, Britain, Romania, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
– Revoke the Matthew Shepard Act.
– Make Barack Obama un-endorse same-sex marriage.
As far as I’m concerned, they can go ahead and wallow in their greasy “victory” if it makes them happy. Let them think they’re actually doing something with any real impact, and meanwhile, we’ll keep progressing toward full equality for everyone.
* Thanks to David Hart for the correction.
It also showed me how many of the people I know are bigots. It showed me how it is definitly not safe to come out.
What it did do for the fight for equality was to give a concrete example that the bigotry is alive and well. Someone says, “Oh, the discrimination is all in your head.” and all we have to do is show them a damn photo of the crowds at Chick-fil-a. And for better or worse, it got people talking. And talking leads to action.
Just mindboggling he’d theoretically even be proud of setting anyone’s rights back by 20 years. Bigoted, and proud of it.
I could not get over how many people in my Failbook feed just did not know what the first amendment was. People I was sure were educated enough in civics to understand it.
Given how fast the tide is turning, it’s more like being set back 20 minutes.
Sound like wishful thinking by Mr. Barber.
And it is SUCH shitty fucking food to begin with. We’re not talking the goddamn Soup Nazi here where the mulligatawny is just so fucking grand you’ll put up with whatever just to get a slurp. It’s nasty, shitty, greasy fucking garbage I probably wouldn’t stomach even if the goddamn owner offered a free gay marriage with every fifth punch of your LGBT loyalty card.
Seriously…FUCK Chick-fil-fucking-a. The best reason among many good ones to avoid that fucking shithole.
“Revoke civil unions in Ireland, Lichtenstein, Hungary, Austria, Colombia, Ecuador, Switzerland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Britain, Luxembourg, Finland, Germany, France, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, New Jersey and Maine.”
Can I be a terrible (and slightly off-topic) pedant? It’s ‘the United Kingdom’ (UK), not Britain. ‘Britain’ excludes Northern Ireland, and while Northern Ireland was the last of the four constituent countries of the UK to decriminalise homosexuality (as late as 1982), their civil partnerships are now as valid as in England, Scotland or Wales.
Sorry about that, but now you know:-)
Thank you! I am not as knowledgeable on Britain and the United Kingdom as I could be.
This might be helpful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10
Barber is clearly happy in his belief that crappy fried chicken and, more importantly, corporate money derived from that crappy fried chicken, continues to flow and support anti-gay hate and bigotry around the world.
I hope lives long enough to see he was on the wrong side of history and moral decency.
It didn’t set anything back. It just showed how many ignorant bigots there still are in the US, and how many people are proud to show it off.
New Zealand has also introduced civil unions in the past 20 years. And we will probably get same sex marriage some time in the next year.
Your list of places with legal same-sex marriage is missing the first country, The Netherlands, and the first US state, Massachusetts.
Actually, the Netherlands is already in there under the name of ‘Holland’.
Now, I could get incredibly pedantic and complain about how ‘Holland’ are but two provinces of the Netherlands and the only reason people call it Holland is probably because, during the days of the Republic, North-Holland was where all the money and power was, but…
Well, I’ve just come to accept people will keep calling my country ‘Holland’. Even my own countrymen tend to call it Holland when talking to foreigners, because Netherlands is just so darn difficult to pronounce.
I prefer The Netherlands, because French people will always mishear “Ireland” as “Holland” (whether you’re speaking English or French). So explaining where I’m from to a French person always takes ages. (They even warn about this in French classes in school.)
TRiG.
So then who are the Dutch?
(old Seinfeld reference)
It didn’t set us back. In fact I convinced 5 people I know, all fundies, to look into the FRC, AFAR, etc. more closely. One has stopped eating at CFA in solidarity. Three have begun discussing the human rights violations and questioning their own beliefs on equality. One was my father.
So what, about 297 million Americans didn’t eat at CFA.
I went to KFC in protest – there were no news crews for some reason.
5000 whining atheists vs the Great Prophet
http://www.ottawaskeptics.org/forum?func=view&id=4560&catid=3
It also didn’t overturn Lawrence v. Texas
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The short version: The US is not treating LGBT people the way Iran and Saudi Arabia do. Which is exactly what the far right want to happen.
Support CFA Day turned out to be a great fundraising tool for LGBT equality groups. It inspired me to make yet another donation to Lambda Legal.
Donate (the cost of) a Chicken Dinner for Marriage Equality Day
I’ll happily add that it didn’t overturn Romer v. Evans and reinstate Colorado’s infamous Amendment 2 of 1992.
Had I known what douchebags Rat-Fil-A were, I would not have had lunch there one summer.
Buffy:
(love the name, don’t know why)
not only that, but it showed a lot of complacent allies of the queer community just how vile these bigots are. This crapfest affected people across the country in such a way that arguments between friends and family have been had.
Will that mean that friends and family of the queer community will speak out more?
Here’s hoping.
Look for a slow but steady loss of profitability for Chick-fil-A. They can raise an alarm and get a good number of people to show up, perhaps even buy a sandwich, but as with standing on one foot, it is a forced act that wears on patience and energy. The negative effects will be seen over months and years.
Chain restaurants are typically low-margin operations and those that operate in malls are at higher risk. In a mall they can take advantage of mall events and promotions by other retailers but it comes at the price of high rents and unpredictable surges in customer demand that requires a business to have extra people on hand even when business is down. A slight but persistent downturn that can be weathered in an independent retail setting can spell doom for a business set up in a mall.
Give it a year to show, and a quarter for corporate leniency to fail, and you will start to see Chick-fil-A stores closing. The name will likely hold out, and pockets of enthusiasm remain indefinitely, but the prospects of the brand don’t look good long term.
I think I’ve eaten at Chick-fil-A only once, and that with someone else buying. It seemed to me to be an uninspired and slightly overpriced chicken sandwich. It struck me as being very much in line with the rest of the mall where most things sold are a little are over-hyped and overpriced but really unremarkable as products. Chick-fil-A was set up to take advantage of factory farm produced chicken breasts. Way-back-when it was something new. Now, not so much.
I agree with Art. In the long run the business will suffer. My boycott of CFA won’t hurt them. I’ve only eaten there once and thought it was awful (when your much-touted chicken sandwich is MUCH worse than MacDonald’s, you have a problem). But they will lose business from many others who used to eat there regularly and the ones who stood in line have so many other options and no special reason to choose CFA after the publicity dies down. So there won’t be quite so much extra cash available to fund hate groups. which is good.