Step Away from Chick-fil-A

Since—and even before—the day that a few dozen Irish tenants won their struggle for a fare and reasonable rent by simply refusing to do business with their land agent, Captain Charles Boycott, in the 1880s, boycotts have been an incredibly successful, nonviolent means to a long list of very noble ends: they helped incite the thinking that would eventually fuel the American Revolution; they helped end British rule in India; they helped stop segregation in the American South.

By other words, they can be called an embargo, a prohibition or simply an avoidance of association with something, and it is an action that can be exercised both by individuals and by governments. No matter the context or specific purpose, though, at its core, it’s the same basic idea: sometimes, your actions-or, rather, your lack of actions-speak louder than your words. Not doing something is doing something.

Everyone, as per the 1st Amendment, has the freedom to think and speak in whichever way they see fit and that is part of what makes the United States a groundbreaking and historic country. S. Truett Cathy is more than free to espouse his political and religious views in whatever way he sees fit and is more than entitled to his own opinions.

But people like him aren’t what make our country such a potentially awesome place. Because he is not like the American patriots that delivered us from a tyrannical and oppressive despot; he is not like the pacifist who single-handedly helped deliver India from the grips of colonialism; and he is not like the Montgomery bus boycotters.

What makes us a great country are not the Americans that choose to use their 1st Amendment freedom in a way that serves to abridge the rights of others, but, rather, those committed citizens who go out of their way to help others so that they may share in the those same liberties. The people who truly follow the Golden Rule mystified in Christian theology by ‘treating others the way they would like to be treated.’

I’d like to think we can all use a little less fried chicken in our diets for purely health-related reasons, but what better reason to steer clear of battered poultry than a homophobic and bigoted old white man that not only disavows same-sex marriage as an institution, but even goes so far as to temper the fair treatment of homosexual employees at his restaurants.

There’s stepping forward and there’s stepping backwards, ladies and gentlemen. And I, personally, think the only step forward in this situation is a step away from Chick-fil-A. But that’s just me.