Chick-fil-A has a ton of fans, and those fans tend to love everything about it.
But the restaurant is also hugely controversial.
Let's take an in-depth look at just why some places just don't want Chick-fil-A on their
doorstep.
The San Antonio City Council made national headlines in March 2019 when they voted on
what new restaurants would be coming to the San Antonio International Airport.
NBC says that while they welcomed other eateries with open arms, they gave Chick-fil-A a very,
very swift kick out the door.
Some people were thrilled with their decision.
“The LGBT community is excited that the city council has decided to look for businesses
that support ALL Americans for our airport.”
Just two weeks later, strangely similar headlines were popping up again, as yet another airport
objected to welcoming Chick-fil-A.
“Buffalo Niagara International Airport scrapped Chick-Fil-A due to the restaurant’s ‘long
history of supporting and funding anti-LGBTQ organizations.”
NBC reported that New York state lawmakers were proudly vocal about supporting the decision.
And they weren’t the only ones taking a stand against Chick-fil-A. After students
at Rider University voted Chick-fil-A as their top choice to be added to the university’s
renovations, the school removed the restaurant from their survey, citing Chick-fil-A’s
perceived anti-inclusion stance.
“I’m kinda upset about it.
I personally like Chick-fil-A.”
And there are other protests and boycotts going on, too.
When the Pittsburgh Marathon announced they were partnering with Chick-fil-A to sponsor
the Pittsburgh Kids Marathon and the Kids of Steel program in 2016, TribLive reported
the Pittsburgh Public School board voted unanimously to oppose the partnership.
“The resolution notes that Chick-Fil-A has expressed views contrary and in conflict with
the district’s non-discrimination policies.”
Even existing Chick-fil-A locations have felt pressure from their host cities and campuses.
In 2012, Elon University in North Carolina went to its food vendor asking to get Chick-fil-A
off the campus and find another option for students, the Huffington Post reported.
And they weren't alone.
In 2016, Huffington Post reported that Georgia's Emory University first distanced themselves
from the ultra-conservative beliefs of the chain, then finally removed the restaurant.
Even college campuses in traditionally conservative states have seen protests and petitions to
get Chick-fil-A off school grounds, says HuffPo.
The University of Southern Mississippi, the University of North Florida, and the University
of South Alabama all have had student movements organized against Chick-fil-A, alongside more
traditionally liberal schools like New York University.
After San Antonio voted to block Chick-fil-A from the airport, Councilman Roberto Trevino
said it was because the city didn’t have room, quote, “for a business with a legacy
of anti-LGBTQ behavior."
The city’s mayor, Ron Nirenberg was also opposed to having the restaurant in the airport
but for an entirely different reason.
“If you’re trying to buy waffle fries on a Sunday?
They’re closed.
15% of airport sales come on a Sunday.”
Chick-fil-A responded to the decision by pointing out they already had 32 stores in San Antonio,
and it was Democratic Assemblyman Sean Ryan from Buffalo, New York that explained why
there was a difference between restaurants set up on a city street, versus one built
in an airport.
He said,
"The views of Chick-fil-A do not represent our state or the Western New York community,
and businesses that support discrimination have no place operating in taxpayer-funded
public facilities."
And when Rider University blocked the chicken chain, they weren't shy about saying why they
had done it, either.
According to their official statement via CBS Philly, the university’s president said,
The Cathy family has done a lot of good in the world.
The Forbes article titled The Cult of Chick-fil-A starts out by interviewing a Chick-fil-A worker
who grew up in the group foster home Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy founded.
But that's not what the bans are about.
The bans are about other beliefs firmly held by the late Cathy, an evangelical Southern
Baptist, and his family.
“The Bible tells a lot about how to operate our business if we just read and apply.”
He has also said that he prefers to have employees who are married because they're more productive
than unmarried workers.
And when it came to recruiting new franchisees, Cathy didn't just interview prospective owners,
but their family and children as well.
And if those interviews revealed something he didn't like?
He's said he would fire an employee who, quote, "has been sinful."
If that sounds like an uncomfortable amount of scrutiny put on employees' personal lives,
some of them have said as much, too.
In 2012, Truett Cathy's son, Dan Cathy, spoke with the Biblical Recorder.
That's what really kicked off all the fire and brimstone.
Cathy was asked about his stance on marriage, and whether or not all the rumors were true.
CNN gave a brief recap of his answer.
“He said that he was, quote, ‘guilty as charged’ in his stance against same-sex
marriage.”
He also said Chick-fil-A was supporting the, quote, “biblical definition of the family
unit” and said that Chick-fil-A was based on:
"Biblical principles, asking God and pleading with God to give us wisdom on decisions we
make about people and the programs and the partnerships we have,"
Just prior to that interview, Cathy had gone on a radio show and made the following comment:
"I think we're inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and
say ‘We know better than you what constitutes a marriage.’”
Despite the backlash the company had received, in a 2018 interview with WSB-TV, Cathy expressed
the exact same beliefs.
He said:
“I personally express a view of support of the biblical definition of marriage.”
Lots of companies have divisions and offshoots organized for their charitable giving.
Chick-fil-A has the WinShape Foundation, which was founded by Truett Cathy in 1984.
Their mission statement says the organization:
"provides meaningful experiences […] that […] expose life-altering hope and truth."
That's pretty vague, and in March 2019, ThinkProgress released what they found after they took a
deep dive into just where Chick-fil-A's donations, most of which were funneled through WinShape,
were going.
In 2017, three groups were given more than $1.8 million by Chick-fil-A and their charitable
giving.
The largest recipient was the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a sports-based organization
that includes this in their, quote, “Purity Statement":
"The Bible is clear in teaching on sexual sin including sex outside of marriage and
homosexual acts.
Neither [...] constitute an alternative lifestyle acceptable to God."
Other recipients included the Paul Anderson Youth Home, which teaches that gay marriage
directly opposes the wishes of God, and the Salvation Army, which has had its share of
anti-LGBTQ doctrine.
A list Vox assembled also included the Georgia Family Council and a company called Exodus
International, which closed its doors in 2013 after much scrutiny and decades of promoting
controversial conversion therapy.
“The mission of Exodus was to help people who were same-sex attracted to… not act
on that.”
According to Vox, Chick-fil-A promised to stop participating in the marriage debate,
and some groups even said the restaurant would stop funding anti-LGBTQ groups after the fallout
from Cathy's comments in 2012.
But they haven't, and there's nothing that's clear-cut about Chick-fil-A's charitable giving.
Organizations backed by WinShape have said that they're simply youth- and family-focused
organizations.
According to LGBT organization Campus Pride, Chick-fil-A had dropped the most divisive,
anti-LGBT groups from their list of donation recipients, including the Family Research
Council, which was classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a, quote, "Designated
Hate Group."
The Advocate has reported that Chick-fil-A had found a bit of a loophole for donations.
It was Dan Cathy that was doing the donating and fundraising, not the WinShape Foundation,
to a fundraiser for the Marriage and Family Foundation.That organization was also founded
by the Cathy family and focused on lowering divorce rates and protecting the institution
of marriage from decline.
Cathy family aside, what's Chick-fil-A's official stance?
After they were pushed out of the consideration as a sponsor for the Pittsburgh Kids Marathon
and the Kids of Steel program in 2016, Chick-fil-A responded in a statement shared by CBS Pittsburgh,
which read:
According to Business Insider, the chain has come a long, long way in moving past the controversy
their founding family's comments have made.
“I’ve been able to reach out to people in the gay community and sit down and have
some incredibly wonderful dialogue with them.”
Chick-fil-A has also successfully opened in liberal-leaning cities including New York,
Portland, and the Seattle area, sales figures are on the rise, and they've done it — in
part — by warning their franchisees not to talk about any beliefs about traditional
marriage they might have.
As a corporation, they're trying to promote a more inclusive image, even though that means
still choosing very carefully when it comes to the church groups and community activism
they get involved in.
According to Peter Kirsanow of the US Commission on Civil Rights, there's a huge problem with
places banning Chick-fil-A on the basis of their anti-gay marriage stance.
In a letter he wrote to the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority regarding Buffalo's
decision to follow San Antonio's example, he said it was nothing short of discrimination
because there was a lack of evidence that Chick-fil-A had ever actually discriminated
against someone based on their sexual orientation, they just said it went against their traditional
Christian beliefs.
And according to CNN, Texas' attorney general, Ken Paxton, condemned San Antonio's ban on
Chick-fil-A, saying it was discriminatory.
He called for an investigation into whether or not the council's decision to prevent Chick-fil-A
from opening was even legal, and he reached out to the US Department of Transportation,
too.
USA Today adds that other groups — like the First Liberty Institute, a religious liberty-focused
law firm — were also condemning the action as religious discrimination.
While San Antonio and Buffalo made it clear that Chick-fil-A wasn't going to be welcome
in their airports, San Jose, California had a different solution.
According to The Mercury News, San Jose originally approved Chick-fil-A's presence in its airport
in March 2018.
By the time people started to protest in the wake of the news coming out of Buffalo and
San Antonio, their new Chick-fil-A was only about a month away from opening.
What's a city council to do?
Former county supervisor Ken Yeager — who's currently the head of the Bay Area Municipal
Elections Committee, and is the city's first openly gay elected official — said that
instead of going anti-Chick-fil-A, he'd prefer to see transgender and rainbow flags posted
all around it, as a, quote, “counter-signal to the discrimination supported by Chick-fil-A."
Others on the council got on board, too, endorsing their support for adding flags to the airport
and declining to extend their contract from 2026 to 2028, citing their Sunday closures
as the reason.
But council members also made it very, very clear what they were going for, adding that
they were going to promote the hiring of LGBT employees and make it the, quote, "gayest
Chick-fil-A in the country."
It's also worth noting that when push comes to shove, some Chick-fil-A restaurants have
broken corporate rules to lend a helping hand where it was needed most… even when it was
the LGBTQ community that needed help.
One of the most defining traits of the company is that they have always closed on Sunday,
and it's just one of those unbreakable rules.
But in 2016, a Chick-fil-A in Orlando opened on a Sunday to hand out free food to first
responders, blood donors, and law enforcement working at the Pulse nightclub shooting.
An official spokesperson for the company said that yes, there are occasions when they will
open on Sunday to provide community aid, and even though the Huffington Post said this
gesture was particularly surprising given their history of standing firmly against marriage
equality, and the fact that Pulse was a gay nightclub.
But Chick-fil-A said they weren’t looking for any kind of recognition.
“They simply wanted to do what was right.
And on that Sunday, this is what was right.”
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