The gentleman who sent me this message didn't ask that I omit his name but I think I will for now. If he writes and asks me to include it in this post, I'll go back and edit this. What he wrote was…
I appreciated your post on Chick-fil-A today. There are two outstanding problems with the company's announcement. The first is that the company has not admitted that their donations to anti-LGBTQ organizations may have caused irreparable damage to some members of that community. Not only should there be an apology, but also a good faith donation to some charities that help the at-risk LGBTQ community to help heal the damage they had a hand in causing, even if it was indirect.
Second, just because there won't be any more corporate donations to organizations like the Salvation Army and others that hold anti-LGBTQ beliefs, that doesn't mean that the owners of the family-held corporation won't continue to do so from their own pockets.
If they had really evolved in their thinking they'd have made such a point in the announcement. The lack of one proves that as you said, this is merely a ploy to help them increase business in areas hostile to their company. As the parent of an LGBTQ child, I'm far from letting them off the hook for anything. Thank you for your diligence.
I am 100% behind the idea that consenting adults should be totally free to love or marry — or even divorce if they so choose — but I think your expectations are unrealistic. We know very little about why the decision was made at Chick-fil-A HQ but it's probably not because everyone involved was struck by the same bolt of complete enlightenment at the same time. Maybe the decision to donate to anti-LGBTQ charities has increasingly been a conflicted one with some folks there. Maybe some are concerned with it being bad for business, some firmly behind it, some wavering in some beliefs that Gay Marriage was a bad thing, etc.
Human beings don't usually leap from being firmly against something to firmly in favor of it. Not unless they're Lindsey Graham, at least.
I have an acquaintance who not so long ago thought same-gender wedlock would trigger the end of civilization as we then knew it. He and I had some (shall we say?) "interesting" debates on the topic but what has really moved him away from that conviction is that it has now been 4.5 years since the Supreme Court made its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. He can't draw any line between that decision and any of 93 things that trouble him about the world today.
He has not evolved to the point of baking gay wedding cakes and atoning for past sins. His attitude is now more like "I still think it's wrong for them to marry but I'm not so sure the government should be making laws about it." So he has more or less absented himself from that battle. If you knew this guy, you would consider that a tremendous "win" for your point-o'-view and would not expect more right away.
Some controversies end that way, at least on a personal basis. As I understand it, when you hear that some big company has decided to stop advertising on (and therefore supporting) a Tucker Carlson or a Lawrence O'Donnell, it is not that the outfit feels the need to renounce something those gents say. It's that they just want out of the battle. I once heard someone say on some show of one such decision, "It was the compromise to stop the fights over outside political matters in the Board of Directors meetings." Everyone there feels the same way they always did except that a majority no longer thinks it's good for the corporation to wade into that particular fray. Someone said, "Let's stop trying to change the world and just sell personal grooming aids!"
That may be the case with Chick-fil-A. They decided to just sell chicken sandwiches, maybe due to increased competition from Popeye's. It's why your second point is, to me, not something we can or should do anything about. Individuals are free to donate to causes that you and/or I find abhorrent. My buying power in the last few days has benefited (among others) Amazon, CVS, Spectrum Cable, TicketMaster, Grubhub, Shell Oil, a nearby car wash, a couple of restaurants, some book publishers and ten or twelve others.
Someone who draws a paycheck, and perhaps a big one from at least one of those firms has probably donated a smidgen of that paycheck to some cause I think is doing the devil's work like opposing minority rights, trying to buy Mr. Trump a second term or, of course, the manufacture of cole slaw. They're free to do that. If I hear about it, I'm free to modify my purchasing if I like. I'm not sure I like or can even track that kind of thing and there's something wrong with boycotting a whole company because one or two folks who work there…
Oh, wait. This is absolutely true: As I was writing the above, I got a text from my associate John that he was on his way over. I texted him back, "Pick up Pollo Loco on your way." He'll be here any minute now with our usual order of El Pollo Loco chicken. Just because I'm writing this piece, I hit Google and entered "pollo loco political donations." And what I found was the perfect example to illustrate what I was just writing about.
It's this statement, which apparently used to be on the company website but which has scrolled away with the passage of time. It's about Proposition 8, the 2008 movement in California that for a time barred gays from marrying. I'll quote a little of it here…
Recent TV newscasts or newspaper articles about the Proposition 8 controversy caused many people to incorrectly believe that our company contributed to the campaign to pass Proposition 8. That is NOT the case. NO donations in support of, or against, Proposition 8 were made by El Pollo Loco or on behalf of our franchise organizations. Our inclusion in news coverage is due to the fact that the name of a single individual who is associated with an El Pollo Loco franchise appears in a published list of contributors.
We are proud to be an organization that respects and values the different perspectives of our employees and our guests and our franchise owners. We believe in equal rights and as well as the rights for people to express their opinions. We believe that our company is made stronger because of our differences and we reinforce our beliefs through our training programs. Some of our guests who mistakenly drew the conclusion that El Pollo Loco contributed to the passage of Prop 8 wrote to tell us they would no longer eat at El Pollo Loco restaurants. We invite you to read the letter that one of our executives sent to those guests.
You can read for yourself that letter from a Senior Vice-President. She had every reason to not support Proposition 8 since she was living with a "partner" (that's what they called them then) of the same gender. A little more Googling will show you a history of El Pollo Loco helping out disaster victims and folks who in everyday life are in need of food.
That's not why I frequently patronize their business. I didn't even know about it until just now. All I knew was that they have great chicken…which, when you come right down to it, is reason enough.