The phenomenally successful restaurant franchise Chick-Fil-A is once again at the center of national controversy. And, once again, it is a controversy generated by those who waste not a moment to equate opposition to so-called \u201csame sex marriage\u201d with \u201chate.\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple of weeks ago, Chick-Fil-A\u2019s CEO, Dan Cathy, told Online Baptist Press that his restaurant was committed to advancing the well being of \u201cthe family\u2014the biblical definition of the family unit.\u201d\u00a0 He continued: \u201cWe are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives.\u201d For this, Cathy said that he gives \u201cGod thanks [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
He also mentioned that he prays that we are not \u201cinviting God\u2019s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, \u2018We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Such an attitude, Cathy asserts, is unduly \u201cprideful\u201d and \u201carrogant.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to Cathy\u2019s remarks, mayors from American\u2019s metropolises have \u201cdisinvited\u201d Chick-Fil-A from opening any new restaurants in their cities. For example, former White House Chief of Staff to Barack Obama and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stated: \u201cChick-Fil-A\u2019s values are notChicago\u2019s values. They [Chick-Fil-A] disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Considering that Chicago has been a killing field under his watch, Mayor Emanuel\u2019s remarks may very well have done more than anything else could have to help make Chick-Fil-A even more successful than it already is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In all seriousness, though, we need to really observe what is happening here.<\/p>\n
As Dan Cathy says, Chick-Fil-A is a family<\/em>-owned business. More specifically, it is a Christian <\/em>family-owned business.\u00a0 And although he is reluctant to characterize his business in terms of Christianity\u2014only individuals can have a relationship with Christ, corporations can\u2019t\u2014the fact of the matter is that Chick-Fil-A is designed to resolutely affirm what can only be described as Christian values.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most salient of such signs is its decision to do business only six days of every week: every Sunday Chick-Fil-A is closed.<\/p>\n But it also routinely\u2014incessantly\u2014sponsors all manner of family-friendly events, and donates substantial sums of money to the most deserving of charities.<\/p>\n In short, Chick-Fil-A most definitely is <\/em>a Christian organization.<\/p>\n This <\/em>is why it continually comes under attack by those who are determined to insure that the voice of anything that can remotely be construed as a traditional form of Christianity is silenced.\u00a0 Cathy\u2019s latest comments are but a pretext for what amounts to nothing more or less than a relentless campaign by radical leftist forces to relegate the Christian to the periphery of the culture.<\/p>\n If we think about it for more than the length of a standard sound bite, we will discover that this verdict is inescapable.<\/p>\n Think about what Cathy is not <\/em>saying.\u00a0 He is not <\/em>saying that Chick-Fil-A refuses to serve homosexuals. He is not <\/em>even saying that his business would refuse to hire <\/em>homosexuals.\u00a0 He hasn\u2019t said anything even close to this.<\/p>\n Chick-Fil-A does indeed engage in discriminatory hiring practices.\u00a0 Yet there is one simple criterion that it employs, and it hasn\u2019t a thing to do with sexuality (or race, gender, etc.).\u00a0 Being a dutiful Chick-Fil-A customer, I have gotten to know some of its managers over the last so many years, and they have all told me the same thing: all members of the Chick-Fil-A staff must be able to provide excellent customer service.\u00a0<\/p>\n What this in turn means is that they must not only be efficient <\/em>in providing customers with the goods that they purchase; they must do so with a smile.<\/p>\n In other words, applicants must either possess a cheery disposition at the time of being hired, or they must possess the will to acquire such a disposition during on-the-job training. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In terms of hospitality, there is no fast food restaurant on the planet quite like Chick-Fil-A.\u00a0\u00a0 To this, everyone who has ever eaten there, regardless of their opinion regarding the quality of its food, can readily attest.<\/p>\n Chick-Fil-A supplies people\u2014its customers, its employees, and untold legions of human beings who have been the beneficiaries of its charitable activities\u2014a service that is immeasurable in worth.\u00a0 Without exaggeration, it can be said that Chick-Fil-A has gone a great distance in helping the lives that it has touched achieve what, as Aristotle long ago recognized, all of us ultimately want: happiness.<\/p>\n Chick-Fil-A is a character molding institution insofar as it aspires to cultivate within its employees those habits that have traditionally been recognized as human excellences <\/em>or virtues.\u00a0 <\/em>The staff at the organization that the Cathy family founded promotes diligence, conscientiousness, humility, generosity, and hospitality.<\/p>\n And it even encourages\u2014by way of its observance of the Christian Sabbath and the innumerable events that it sponsors on behalf of families and local communities\u2014the theological <\/em>virtues of faith, hope, and charity.<\/p>\n This <\/em>is the organization that Chick-Fil-A\u2019s enemies relentlessly smear as a promoter of \u201chate.\u201d\u00a0 We must be clear, for clarity concerning the nature of Chick-Fil-A provides us in spades with clarity concerning the nature of its nemeses.<\/p>\n That the campaign against Chick-Fil-A is part and parcel of a much wider campaign against traditional Christianity becomes obvious once we consider that Cathy\u2019s position on so-called \u201csame sex marriage\u201d is no different than that taken by the entire world <\/em>up until yesterday, as far as history is measured.\u00a0 Even our \u201ctransformative\u201d President, that \u201cworld-historical,\u201d \u201cmulti-cultural\u201d figure himself, Barack Obama, subscribed, or claimed to subscribe, to the same exact position as Cathy\u2019s up until just a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n Here is what we must grasp: if Cathy is \u201chomophobic\u201d because he does not support \u201cgay marriage\u201d or even homosexual activity, then what his enemies are actually charging is that traditional Christianity, from biblical days up until just a few decades ago, is \u201chomophobic.\u201d<\/p>\n More simply put, the God of the Bible is a moral degenerate, for the God that is depicted from Genesis through Revelations is an unreconstructed \u201chomophobe.\u201d<\/p>\n If Cathy and most of the two billion people who constitute the Christian world are \u201chomophobes,\u201d it is because the God who they aspire to honor was a \u201chomophobe\u201d first.<\/p>\n Admittedly, no text or tradition is self-interpreting.\u00a0 Cathy and those of his theological ilk\u2014i.e. most of his contemporaries and all <\/em>of his predecessors of the last couple of millennia\u2014may be mistaken in how they read Christianity.\u00a0 But if this is so, then it is incumbent upon his critics to point out to him the error of his ways.<\/p>\n This they haven\u2019t done.<\/p>\n Yet even if they could prove that Cathy and the overwhelming majority of human beings who have ever lived were incorrect, this would most definitely not <\/em>justify the allegations of \u201chatred\u201d and \u201chomophobia\u201d that Chick-Fil-A\u2019s enemies insist on substituting for rational and civil argument. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The phenomenally successful restaurant franchise Chick-Fil-A is once again at the center of national controversy. And, once again, it is a controversy generated by those who waste not a moment to equate opposition to so-called \u201csame sex marriage\u201d with \u201chate.\u201d A couple of weeks ago, Chick-Fil-A\u2019s CEO, Dan Cathy, told Online Baptist Press that his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n