Chicken Stuff

I ate at a Chick-fil-A yesterday. I may eat at one during  the August 1^st “reverse boycott”, though I may not out of reluctance to stand in line for a such a long time. I am definitely on the company’s side during  this nonsense, despite the fact that I disagree with its owner’s notions on marriage between homosexuals. It’s a free country, and homosexuals have a right to have any kind of marriage ceremonies they want, with any meaning  they want to assign to them, performed and sanctioned by anyone willing to do so. It’s not anyone else’s business, nor is it a threat to the fabric of society. (Whether such marriages should get the government’s recognition and the slightly gentler treatment from the tax collectors that married heterosexuals get is a matter of politics, not rights, and should be settled by voting and legislation, just as was, for example,  the issue of giving  slightly gentler treatment to mortgage payers compared to renters. Questions of rights do not come up in making policies on taxes.)

But I completely oppose the politicians who have threatened to keep Chick-fil-A out of their jurisdictions because of its owner’s opinions on the matter. Prohibiting people from doing business because of their religious beliefs is just a little too central European for me. The politicians who have threatened to do so should retract their threats, apologize in public, and take some time  to think about the role of freedom of conscience and speech in this country.

As an aside, one should imagine how different the reactions in the traditional media and among assorted big city political hacks would have been if the CEO of the chicken outfit had decried homosexual marriages because of his deeply held Islamic beliefs. It makes for  an instructive exercise.