A Side Of Moralising With My Chicken, Please

Samuel Hooper

I love Chick-fil-A.

Their fried chicken is great, perfectly seasoned and cooked just right. The waffle fries are out of this world. So is the sweet tea. The dips are actually tasty, and worthy of having such awesome chicken dunked in them (the barbecue and honey mustard are particularly good). The staff are consistently the friendliest, most courteous, helpful staff you will ever encounter at a fast food restaurant. They employ someone to greet you with a warm welcome when you walk through the door, and they walk the restaurant topping up your soft drinks for free if they notice your cup is getting low (did you hear that, British restaurants? Free refills! Try offering them!).

In short, they are pretty much everything you could want in a fast food restaurant.

Which is why this story, reported by Politico, is so irritating. The article reads, in part:

The fervor over the restaurant’s politics began when Chick Fil A president Dan Cathy said earlier this week that Chick Fil A is “guilty as charged” in support of “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

It really annoys me when companies stumble into the news cycle in this way. Whether it is Target donating to a group that benefitted an anti-gay marriage candidate (even though it is fairly certain that they donated for reasons other than this), the CEO of Whole Foods penning an Op-Ed critical of President Obama’s health reforms, or now Chick-fil-A being dragged into the gay marriage debate, it is all quite unnecessary and seems to bring out the worst (and, incidentally, un-American) aspects of supporters and detractors alike.

Now the three examples above are not identical. In the case of Whole Foods, the CEO wrote his “ObamaCare alternative” op-ed in a personal guise, though coming out and writing a political op-ed piece contrary to the likely views of the vast majority of your customers is certainly not very wise. In the case of Target, they made a donation to a group that supported candidates who promoted pro-business policies that they agreed with, but failed to do their due diligence to ensure that none of the beneficiaries espoused any other, more controversial policies, which unfortunately one of them did.

But in the case of Chick-fil-A, the company president Dan Cathy specifically supported an anti-gay marriage policy, and deliberately included his company in his recent statements, rather than making a statement in a personal capacity. Firstly:

“…we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about.”

And then:

“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 … We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that.”
Without getting into the extent to which corporations really are and are not people, this is just not smart business. Some aspects of the Chick-fil-A corporate culture are very commendable – the fact thay they choose not to open their restaurants on Sundays so that staff have time to spend with their families and attend church if they are religious, for example, is refreshing in this day and age, and harms no one (except people with fried chicken cravings after sunday services).
Announcing that your company does not support marriage equality, on the other hand, while not actively harming anyone (because there is no discrimination at work, the company serves and treats all customers alike), is just plain irrelevant. Chick-fil-A, as a corporate “person”, is not harmed by any attempts to legalise marriage between two people of the same sex. Nor, for that matter, are any private heterosexual individuals, no matter what ludicrous claims they may make.
If a corporation exercises its supposed first amendment right to speak out against a policy that directly impacts its bottom line (such as tax policy or employee healthcare, a la Target or Whole Foods) this is perhaps understandable. But gay marriage? I would be very interested to hear an argument explaining how the legalisation of gay marriage would result in lower profits for Chick-fil-A. And until I hear a convincing one, I will be of the opinion that matters such as these are none of their business, and that they, and their CEO, would do well to keep quiet on the topic.
Why pick an unnecessary fight, alienate potential customers and generate bad headlines? It’s just bad business.

2 thoughts on “A Side Of Moralising With My Chicken, Please”

  1. breslin7706's avatar Sean Breslin July 22, 2012 / 9:29 PM

    It might be bad business, but it’s the way they run their business, and now the customer can decide to go elsewhere if they so choose. I respect their views, even more so if they’re deemed unpopular and it causes them to lose business while they stay strong in their beliefs. As a conservative who supports gay marriage, I still pay to see movies that feature actors who would like me removed from the planet, but it’s my option to avoid them if I so choose.

    I’ll continue to frequent Chick-Fil-A for the same reason. They might not have the most popular values in 2012, but they serve me quality chicken with a friendly attitude every single time, and I can’t say that about a single chain other than them.

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    • Samuel Hooper's avatar belindasgallery July 22, 2012 / 10:18 PM

      I agree with you, with two provisos:

      1. It is still a dumb decision to denounce gay marriage, though one they are perfectly entitled to make. The legalisation of gay marriage would not affect Chick-fil-A’s corporate “person” in the same way a tax rise or changes to employee healthcare requirements would, therefore it is not an existential issue for the company. Assuming the purpose of a company is to generate a return for their investors, anything that jeopardises this (such as p*ssing off a proportion of your customer base just to make a cultural point) is reckless and a case of bad management.

      2. ” I respect their views, even more so if they’re deemed unpopular and it causes them to lose business while they stay strong in their beliefs” – these are the views of the CEO and owning family, not all of the employees. A corporation can’t really be courageous in this sense. Dan Cathy will be fine if business shrinks a little in the wake of a backlash to his words. The junior employee working the cash register for not much more than minimum wage, maybe not so much – they might lose their job. Way to be courageous with someone else’s livelihood.

      I have no plans to boycott Chick-fil-A whenever I am in the USA either. Like I said, I think they are one of the finest fast food chains in the country. But I still think that this is a bad decision on the part of their CEO.

      It’s ridiculous enough for anti-gay marriage campaigners to expect us to believe that they will in any way be affected by the granting of full civil rights to another group. But to make the same claims for a corporation? Come on…

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