Chick-fil-A Betrayal: What Americans Are Saying
Governor Huckabee. Liberty Counsel. Peter Vadala. Family Research Council. Governor Abott. Pastor Scott Lively.
What Americans Are Saying About Dan Cathy’s Deep Fried Judas-Chicken Empire
A fool and his chicken are soon parted.
America’s Man’s Man
Governor Mike Huckabee
Governor Greg Abott
Peter Vadala
You guys get one little taste of success, and you abandon the only moral code you ever had to suck up to the L-G-T-BULLIES. Shame on you and your overpriced, MSG-filled, deep-fried heart attack-Judas chicken. Enjoy your silver. I promise you, it won’t last long.
Front Page Magazine
Chick-fil-A Put an Obama and Hillary Supporter in Charge, but Dumped Christians
Money for social justice and Muslim refugees, but not for the Salvation Army.
Chick-fil-A’s announcement that it was dumping the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which have come under attack by gay activist groups, caught Christian fans of the fast food chain by surprise. It shouldn’t have if they had been paying attention to CFA’s corporate structure.
The donations were coming out of the Chick-fil-A Foundation. The Executive Director of the CFA Foundation is Rodney D. Bullard, a former White House fellow and Assistant US Attorney. Some may have mistaken him for a conservative because he was a fellow in the Bush Administration, but he was an Obama donor, and, more recently, had donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign while at Chick-fil-A.
Like many corporations, Chick-fil-A branded its charitable giving as a form of social responsibility. Bullard became its Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility. Unlike charity, corporate social responsibility is a leftist endeavor to transform corporations into the political arms of radical causes. Like other formerly conservative corporations, Chick-fil-A had made the fundamental error of adopting the language and the infrastructure of its leftist peers. And that made what happened entirely inevitable.
In an interview with Business Insider earlier this year, Bullard emphasized that the Chick-fil-A Foundation had a “higher calling than any political or cultural war.” The foundation boss was preparing the way for the shakeup that was coming in the fall. Even while he claimed that the CFA Foundation had a higher calling than a political or cultural war, he was preparing to accommodate the Left’s cultural war.
Bullard would have been seen as a safe bet. The CFA Foundation and the Christian groups it supported were so entangled that Bullard serves on the Salvation Army’s National Advisory Board and was on the National Board of Trustees of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But Bullard’s vision was not that of charity, but of corporate social responsibility. And the two things are fundamentally different.
Charity helps people. Corporate social responsibility is virtue signaling by capitalists to anti-capitalists. Unlike charity, corporate social responsibility isn’t about helping people, but ticking off ideological and identity politics boxes like diversity and the environment. If people accidentally get helped in the process of helping a corporation signal its membership in the politically correct creed, that can’t be helped.
The Chick-fil-A Foundation will go on funding leftist groups like Atlanta’s Westside Future Fund. The Westside Future Fund is a project of the Atlanta Committee for Progress together with former Mayor Kasim Reed. It will just opt out of funding Christian groups whose views offend anyone on the Left.
The $1.7 million that the Westside Future Fund shoveled in last year from the CFA Foundation vastly outpaces the mere $115,000 that the Salvation Army got for its Angel Tree program to provide gifts for poor children during the holidays. But even that low end six figure donation was too much and the gifts had to be snatched away from the kids by leftist pressure groups and identity politics protesters.
Sorry kids, our politics are more important than your presents.
A less publicized donation of $100,000 went to Sustainable Atlanta. That could have bought a lot of gifts. There was also a $10,000 donation to Saris to Suits whose mission is to “advance women’s empowerment, education, gender equality, and social justice.”
There’s money for social justice, but not for the Salvation Army.
There was $25,000 for UNICEF and $75,000 for the Andrew Young Foundation. That last one isn’t a surprise. Carter’s radical UN ambassador sits on the CFA Foundation’s advisory board. $20,000 went to the Latino Leaders Network, another $20,000 to the Harvard Debate Diversity Network, $45,000 to the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and $5,000 was allotted to Friends of Refugees.
The latter boasts of resettling the sort of refugees who would demand that Chick-fil-A go Halal.
There’s money for Muslim refugees, but not for the Salvation Army.
And that’s the tip of the iceberg. “Diversity”, “equity”, and “social justice” are typical buzzwords associated with many of the organizations that the Chick-fil-A Foundation had been funding. And that’s typical of corporate social responsibility ventures which are all about pictures of smiling poor children cradling green plants accompanied by women in hijabs. There’s nothing unusual about that.
But most conservatives thought, without investigating, that Chick-fil-A was different. It wasn’t another corporate social behemoth. It didn’t answer to shareholders and stakeholders. It had a biblical vision. And, it was under fire for donating to Christian groups. But even when the CFA Foundation donated to Christian organizations, it was also pouring a lot of money into conventional social justice causes.
The controversy and arguments over the donations to organizations like the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes conveniently distracted from where a lot of the money was going.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes had received a mere $25,000 last year. Far less than the funds that poured into Andrew Young’s non-profit empire. A fig leaf.
Now the fig leaf is gone and the reality is that the Chick-fil-A Foundation is just another corporate leftist charity that lavishes cash on organizations linked to local Democrats and assorted diversity causes.
Without the fig leaf, the Chick-fil-A Foundation is no different than the other corporate charities run by their own equivalents of Bullard, men and women who had spent enough time in government to get a useless job in the corporate world, and its abandonment of Christian conservatives was an inevitability.
And the question is what will the Christians who made Chick-fil-A boom do now?
They can either fight to hold Chick-fil-A accountable or shrug and accept another loss. Most of the country’s major brands are pipelines of cash that lead directly to leftist causes. Hardly any of the money that conservatives spend on products and services every day ends up going to conservative causes.
Major brands hammer the air with ad campaigns that directly attack the values and rights of ordinary Americans. And, most Americans, including conservatives, keep on buying from the same huge conglomerates like Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Diageo (Johnny Walker), RBI (Burger King and Popeyes), General Mills, and from retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon, despite their leftist politics.
Chick-fil-A was supposed to be different. If there’s any company that conservatives can hold accountable, this is it. And if they can’t hold Chick-fil-A accountable, then what’s left?
Accountability doesn’t just begin with restoring donations to worthy charities like the Salvation Army, but a serious reevaluation of the Chick-fil-A Foundation’s leadership and its overall charitable priorities.
If Chick-fil-A wants to be in the business of corporate social responsibility, rather than charity, it will over time become increasingly hostile to the very customers who made it successful. Corporate social responsibility will take it down the same dark road of virtue signaling and political correctness.
Then, before you know it, there will be a Chick-fil-A ad campaign about toxic masculinity.
And then the legacy of its founder will be as thoroughly lost as the legacies of the founders of so many other great American companies whose modern incarnations slavishly serve anti-American causes.
That would be a tragedy. This is a test of whether that tragedy is truly inevitable.
It’s also a warning. If conservatives had paid closer attention to the Chick-fil-A Foundation’s leadership, Bullard’s $1,000 donation to Hillary Clinton in 2016 would have provided a warning of what was coming.
Organizations don’t trend rightward. They trend leftward. Any organization that isn’t closely watched will go the way of the Chick-fil-A Foundation. If this can happen at Chick-fil-A, it can happen anywhere.
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council, Washington D.C.
Most of us who were there on that sunny August day will never forget. For everyone else, there’s a sign: “Above this plaque is a bullet hole. It marks the heroic action taken by Family Research Council employee Leo Johnson on August 15, 2012.” That was the morning Floyd Corkins walked into our lobby and changed FRC forever. He’d bought a gun and learned how to use it. He’d loaded three magazines. In his backpack was a stash of chicken sandwiches that he planned to smear in the faces of staffers he hoped to kill. “They endorse Chick-fil-A,” he said. It would be a “statement against the people who work there.”
Thanks to Leo, it was a statement he never got to make. Fourteen days after someone snapped a picture of our staff smiling over boxes of Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, Leo was the only thing standing between Floyd Corkins and an FRC massacre. To a lot of Americans, the company’s decision to walk away from years of biblical truth is upsetting. To us, it’s personal.
In the days and years after that, we never talked publicly about Chick-fil-A’s response to the shooting. Mainly because there wasn’t one. Through all of the press conferences, the trial, and sentencing, I never once picked up the phone or opened my email to a message from someone at headquarters. Not even to ask about Leo. Obviously, Chick-fil-A wanted then what they want publicly now: as much distance from our movement as possible.
That was tough, but we stayed quiet — hoping that if groups like FRC stood beside them, the company Christians had come to love would have the courage to keep living out their values in the public square. And for seven years, they seemed to. Even when the mob turned up the heat, blocking them from airports, cities, and college campuses, Chick-fil-A rode a wave of conservative support to its highest profits ever. They didn’t just survive the LGBT-initiated boycotts — they thrived, doubling sales since the moment liberals decided it was a “controversy” to give to charities like the Salvation Army.
Whole states got involved — protecting Chick-fil-A’s freedom to believe in legislation that was even named after the company. Cabinet members like Secretary Elaine Chao stuck out their necks, promising to investigate the ban in San Antonio’s terminals. Millions of families drove out of their way to stop at Chick-fil-A — not because the chicken was that good, but because their conviction was. If you’re wondering why the backlash is so strong, it’s because the people who held up this company as a model of moral courage were betrayed. Unlike so many others in corporate America, Chick-fil-A was standing on truth and winning. Then, after years of holding the line, they just up and walked off the field, leaving loyal customers holding the bag.
And for what? To prove how “tolerant” they are? To appease them? Well, in case Chick-fil-A hasn’t been paying attention, there is no appeasement. Groups like GLAAD are already demanding more. “In addition to refraining from financially supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations, Chick-fil-A still lacks policies to ensure safe workplaces for LGBTQ employees and should unequivocally speak out against the anti-LGBTQ reputation that their brand represents.” That’s what this chicken company doesn’t understand. Stand strong, and the bullies will leave you alone. Cave, you’ll be led down a path of complete surrender. They might as well hang out a sign that says, “Under New Management: the Radical Left’s.”
One thing we need to understand is this: Immorality never stands still. It’s constantly on the march for more. That’s the reality of our fallen world. We just want to co-exist, they said. Our relationships won’t affect you, they said. A handful of years later, “affected” doesn’t begin to describe what happens to conservatives who think differently than the totalitarian Left.
“If Chick-fil-A thinks that caving to PC pressure will help them grow as a company, they might to check with the folks over at the Boy Scouts to see how well that strategy works,” Matt Walsh fired back. The Scouts buckled to LGBT activists six years ago, snatching defeat from the jaws of a Supreme Court victory. Now, they’re teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, literally mortgaging away their values with real estate. In what reporters are calling a “desperate move,” the BSA announced yesterday that it had put its “crown jewel,” the Philmont Ranch, on the market. Why? Because when you compromise on core principles, your base abandons you, the Left isn’t satisfied, and you’re standing all alone. Chick-fil-A should know that better than anyone. Its president, Tim Tassopoulosi, has seen the demise first-hand from his seat on the BSA Advisory Board.
But the worst part of Chick-fil-A’s decision isn’t the damage it does to its own reputation — but to others’. By backing away from two faith-based organizations in the Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the third largest fast-food chain just helped legitimize the Left’s labeling of these groups. And they’ve given every other company and celebrity that supports the Red Kettle campaign cover to do the same. The selfishness of that — sacrificing two other Bible-believing groups as acceptable collateral damage — says a lot about where Chick-fil-A is as an organization. (Who would’ve thought that pop star Ellie Goulding, who threatened to back out of the NFL’s halftime show over a Salvation Army drive, would end up being more accepting than a “Christian” fast-food chain?)
Every believer in today’s culture understands the price of standing for truth. Some people more than others. For every company that takes the road of compromise, there are courageous Christians like Aaron and Melissa Klein or David and Tierney Abel, who are willing to give up everything just to stay true to their convictions. They understand that fear is real, but our faith must be too. The world tells us: Don’t rock the boat. Scripture disagrees. Don’t pray for deliverance, the disciples were told. Pray for boldness. God changes the course of human history through people who fear Him, not the intolerant crowd.
Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel
Franklin, you have done a huge disservice by not doing more investigation into Chick-fil-A’s betrayal and capitulation to the LGBT agenda. While Dan Cathy may say the company has the same values, the company’s statements and actions tell a different story. The President and Chief Operating Officer, Tim Tassopoulos continues to serve as an advisor to the Atlanta Boy Scouts. This alone should raise a red flag considering the Boy Scouts also capitulated to the LGBT agenda. He stated: “There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are.” “There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”
In 2014, Chick-fil-A decided to stop funding the Paul Anderson Youth Home because it was accused of being “anti-LGBT.” But it still had funding commitments with the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, both of which are also falsely accused of being “anti-LGBT” because they have biblical policies on marriage and sex outside of marriage. Now that the funding commitment has expired, Chick-fil-A says it will no longer fund the Salvation Army and FCA, even though the Salvation Army fits within its giving priority of funding organizations that provide housing and food banks, and FCA provides education. Instead, Tassopoulos states Chick-fil-A will now fund Covenant House International, which is much smaller than the Salvation Army (in only 31 cities) and an LGBTQ activist.
Tassopoulos, speaking of funding Covenant House, states: “This provides more focus and more clarity.” At least he is correct, and this clarity reveals the betrayal.
The founder of Covenant House, a Catholic priest pedophile, was sued for allegedly sexually abusing the youth who were seeking shelter and food. Covenant House proudly promotes LGBTQ on its website, referring to “LGBTQ Inclusion Initiatives,” and even doing an “inclusion assessment” at every one of its facilities.
Covenant House also proudly supports the New York City Gay Pride parade with its own float, banners, t-shirts, and hastag #CovUnity. Covenant House is recognized as a national funder of LGBTQ causes.
Chick-fil-A dumps the Salvation Army because it wants to expand into new markets and now shuns originations the LGBT activists falsely call “anti-LGBT,” and then turns 180 degrees to announce that it will now fund Covenant House, a radical LGBTQ activist organization that celebrates homosexuality, transgenderism, and the entire LGBTQ agenda.
And Covenant House does not stop at LGBTQ activism; it also takes girls to abortion clinics.
To save its own corporate skin, Chick-fil-A has thrown good, biblical, organizations under the bus and legitimized the false narrative of the LGBT activists. I attended a meeting yesterday in Washington, D.C., with national leaders, and although the meeting was not about Chick-fil-A, the leaders expressed outrage and betrayal over Chick-fil-A’s betrayal.
But Chick-fil-A’s betrayal of the Christian community will not satisfy the LGBT activists. These groups are calling for more, including employment benefits.
Chick-fil-A voluntarily surrendered to gain entrance into more liberal communities. In doing so, the company has caused incredible damage to the greater Christian community.