Put down your tar and feathers, folks. Chick-fil-A may be changing its hateful priorities.
According to an article from CNN, Campus Pride, a leading national LGBT campus organization, said Chick-fil-A “no longer funds the most controversial and politically charged anti-same-sex-marriage groups and has not since 2011.”
The article also said the lump of donations focus on “‘youth, education, marriage enrichment and local communities’ and that in the list of the foundation’s beneficiaries, ‘the most divisive, anti-LGBT groups are no longer listed.’”
OK! It seems like we’re finally moving in the right direction.
Yes, there is always more than one side to an argument. This past summer, when the world half-boycotted, half-supported-the-crap-out-of those greasy chicken sandwiches, lovers of the company couldn’t understand why it couldn’t make whatever donations it wanted.
The point, however, is a company and its executive board can believe in whatever they so choose, but everyone else is allowed to as well.
Where does the boundary of your rights or privileges end? At spouse selection. Maybe Chick-fil-A finally saw that.
The company released a statement this week, according to the Los Angeles Times, that tried to explain, again, what it actually intends to put its donations toward.
“Over the past three years alone, Chick-fil-A has given more than $68 million in contributions to over 700 different educational and charitable organizations around the country, in addition to providing millions of dollars in food donations,” it stated. “Our intent is to not support political or social agendas.”
We still have our suspicions.
Conservative values are fine. We don’t want to make it seem like being charitable to the types of organizations Chick-fil-A listed is a horrible thing. We just think and hope that, as a country, we can continue to grow toward a level of peace with one another. There’s no reason to throw millions of dollars to groups whose main goals are to hurt people.
“It is about opposing viewpoints, not opposing people,” said Shane Windmeyer, the executive director of Campus Pride, regarding Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A. “Dan cares about young people and was upset to hear how his company was being used to hurt LGBT students.”
Maybe the bigger picture here is that we all need to look way, way past what companies do. It shouldn’t matter how a company spends its billions of dollars because we’re a consumer-based society. However, it totally does matter.
If only we didn’t have to rely on donations from huge companies in order to get stuff done. If only Americans didn’t spend so much money on everything, all the time, forever.
But we do. So we have to be concerned where our money ends up. Because if we don’t pay attention to it now, then this will happen again and more often until we limit where large companies can donate.
No need to fund hate with millions of dollars. We should support organizations that do good things.
