At the Chick-fil-A on Ga. Highway 74 at Peachtree Parkway in Peachtree City, my 12-year-old daughter Kristen and I are regulars, picking up her breakfast and Cobb salad for lunch a couple times a week on the way to The Bedford School in Fairburn. I remember the pleasant surprise of my very first visit to Chick-fil-A at the Cordova Mall in Pensacola, Fla., about 40 years ago.
And so it will seem odd to you and even a little strange to me that this high quality fast food chain reminds me to worry about America.
Recently the principal at California’s Ventura High School banned the football booster club from selling Chick-fil-A sandwiches at a fund-raiser out of fear someone might be offended. He said he didn’t want Chick-fil-A products on campus, and was supported by the school district officials.
This is just one of hundreds of boycotting actions taken against the food chain to protest President Dan Cathy’s public statements against gays. The first problem is, he didn’t really say anything against gays.
Cathy’s remarks were in response to questions in an interview. This response launched the left into orbit: “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”
Our media, reliable promoter of gay marriage while pretending objective coverage, captured and magnified this issue in their echo chamber, whipping the left into a frenzy of opposition to this all-American establishment. That Cathy’s sentiments are the same as found in nearly every church in the country didn’t seem to give the left any pause at all.
Second, cowards on the left like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama only very recently decided to publicly support gay marriage, having disguised their pro-gay sentiments because they needed your vote. But when they sniffed the shifting winds on the gay marriage issue, they had a miraculous epiphany, they sensed a gathering parade, jumped in front and declared themselves leaders. Half of America lapped it up just in time to become obediently outraged at Chick-fil-A.
A personal irony here is that an unrepentant conservative like me was publicly way to the left of the Clintons and Obama on gay marriage for years. One of my earliest AJC columns was in July 2000, opining that laws preventing gay marriage are grossly unfair since even lifelong committed same-sex couples suffer severe tax penalties because they are not permitted to marry.
I have written several columns since then arguing that my fellow conservatives are wrong to oppose gay marriage, that our personal opinions on sexuality and discomfort at public gay affection are trumped by the freedom of those people to love and commit to the one they choose. I call that conservative thinking; many don’t.
I’m not seeking attaboys now that my gay marriage argument is on the more popular side of the issue, but I would point out that my sentiments are likely contradictory to Dan Cathy’s, and yet I have continued to enjoy Chick-fil-A uninterrupted throughout. They don’t care about my orientation or my politics at Chick-fil-A; they just sell good food to hungry patrons.
The funny thing is, even while my fellow conservatives continue to think I am wrong on this issue, we have always been able to have our disagreements with a smile over coffee and continue our friendship with mutual respect.
So why is it the left, with self-righteous claims to have a corner on tolerance, are so dang intolerant, and why are they so determined to punish anyone who disagrees with them? Isn’t America supposed to be the place we are free to exercise our own beliefs?
The vitriol aimed at Chick-fil-A and their customers in the past couple of years has been frightening to anyone familiar with fascism. When did forcing a law-abiding business to succumb to popular will become acceptable in the United States of America?
I am not a religious man, but when did adhering to the teachings of the Bible set up a good man and a fine business for retribution? When did our news media forfeit their suspicion of such threats to liberty, and when did they stop wondering why government is not defending the Constitution?
Does that sound like a bit much over a chicken sandwich flap? What I am really worrying about is whether the next generation loves liberty and our Constitution enough to tear their heads out of their phone to notice a federal government departing from constitutional principles further every year while an apathetic public drifts along in oblivious comfort.
Too much of a reach, you say? Consider a few other recent signs of apathy on American principles.
Last week an 11-year-old sixth-grader was told she was not allowed to wear to school the shirt she had worn every Sept. 11, commemorating those who died with names listed in the shape of the towers that fell.
In Rochester, Mich., Army Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker was trying to help his daughter find her way at her new high school when a security guard stopped him and said he could not enter the school in uniform since it might offend students.
For those of you who never served, this is especially egregious when you consider that one of the prices military families pay for serving us is the frequent uprooting of their families to move to new duty stations, just when the kids have become accustomed to their school and have made a few friends.
In Dallas, Texas, retired Marine Frank Larison was notified by his homeowners association that if he did not remove the Marine Corps stickers from his SUV bumper, he would be fined $50 per day.
In June, 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin was shot eight times by Ali Muhammed Brown as he waited for a red light to turn green in West Orange, New Jersey. Brown confessed to authorities he killed Tevlin intentionally in retribution for U.S. action in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said, “A life for a life,” calling it a “Just kill,” and is suspected in a number of other random killings.
You haven’t heard about it because, I suspect, jihad in America doesn’t fit the media narrative of peaceful Islam.
I could go on but the point is stupidity has become rampant in America, with a common thread of our media shaping their message to promote in your mind a selected viewpoint.
And it is working. Think how fast the wildfire of gay marriage swept the country. Too bad our media doesn’t decide to promote the viewpoint of traditional American values.
Maybe I worry too much. Maybe I should just go to Chick-fil-A knowing they don’t care about my politics at the drive-up window, and knowing Dan Cathy and I could probably enjoy a cup of coffee together even though we don’t see the world in exactly the same way.
I do admire the quality organization he has built, and I can’t think of a more American place to wave the flag and enjoy a chicken sandwich as a tasteful way to poke my finger in the eye of the latest brand of fascism.
[Terry Garlock of Peachtree City occasionally contributes a column to The Citizen. His email is terry@garlock1.com.]
