Making Sense of the Chick-Fil-A Debacle

Call me naïve, but I don't believe the vast majority of people who work for or dine at Chick-Fil-A restaurants actually hate gays and lesbians.

I would argue instead that most members of the right-wing crowd, particularly those who rushed in this week to eat a deep-fried chicken sandwich in support of Chick-Fil-A and traditional marriage, simply don’t understand gayness. And maybe, they even fear it.

Many “family values” supporters earnestly believe that the normalization of gayness in our society somehow threatens their way of life, and so those individuals see their motivation in supporting Chick-Fil-A as protection, not hate. 

A natural by-product of these conservative efforts to defend Judeo-Christian values from perceived attack is the necessary discrimination between hetero and homosexuality. If conservatives believe their biblical interpretation of family values and marriage is right, then any other way must be “wrong.” And who doesn’t like to stand up for what they believe is right?

This is where the problem begins. What is the real value in standing up for religion when doing so genuinely damages other human beings? How does it further the cause of Christ, or even the cause of humanity, when our actions harm others?

I am a grown gay man who has been out to my family and friends for more than two decades. At nearly fifty years old, I know who I am and what my life is worth. But there are many, many gay people who are younger than me, still coming-of-age, still learning about life, still so very impressionable – because they are children. These people, these kids, are the ones who pay the price for the “Godly values” espoused by others, and in far too many instances they pay with their lives.

As a mature fairly self-actualized gay man, whether or not Chick-Fil-A customers believe I am an equal and worthwhile human being has little impact on my emotional well being.

For vulnerable young gay people though, this isn’t so.

Young women and men who grow up confused and frightened by who they are, find the world around them offering not a helping hand, but a punch in the stomach. Young people who live in the shadows, whose very existence brims with doubt, are offered not the light of Christianity, but the dark aloneness of dismissal and rejection. Young people who search, yearn, and beg for understanding, suffer instead the destructive sting of judgment. Young men and women, and sometimes boys and girls, are told by their families and their churches – you are not the same, you are not enough, you are not right.

I don't believe it is the intent of my Christian friends to do devastating emotional injury to children. I know that they are simply working to preserve the way of life that they hold dear and striving to defend their biblical values. Nonetheless, the reactionary public outcry in favor of Chick-Fil-A (and against gay marriage) ultimately reinforces the feelings of isolation and worthlessness that afflict fragile young gay people.

Mormons, and Christians, and Cults, Oh My!

Last weekend at a "family values" conference in Washington D.C., Robert Jeffress, a conservative Baptist minister called Mormonism a cult, and then subsequently attempted to dissuade attendees from voting for Mormon practitioner and presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The bigoted comment sparked a great deal of media attention, but much of the real news, since no one really cares what one fundamentalist Baptist pastor says, turned out to be the reaction to the comment, or lack thereof, from other GOP candidates.

According to politicos like Slate's William Saletan, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, who were so quick to jump on the prior week's "N-----head" controversy, should have been stronger in their repudiation of the "cult" comment. Saletan argues that the reason for the lack of a more vociferous renunciation is that it is still generally acceptable to discriminate against Mormonism - that the idea of being repulsed by anti-Mormon bias has yet to be cemented in our collective conscience in the way that racial discrimination has been. Saletan rightly takes his criticism of Cain and Perry a step further by advising us all on the deeper and more profound ethical lesson of this incident.

"The prejudices you need to work on aren’t the ones you recognize in your grandparents’ generation. They’re the one you don’t recognize in your own generation, and in yourself."