Franklin Graham, whose courage and conviction I greatly respect, has spoken with Chick-fil-A’s CEO, Dan Cathy, and according to Graham, Cathy denies any shift in CFA’s policy. “I picked up the phone and called Dan Cathy. Dan was very clear that they have not bowed down to anyone’s demands, including the LGBTQ community,” Graham said. “They will continue to support whoever they want to support. They haven’t changed who they are or what they believe. Chick-fil-A remains committed to Christian values. Dan Cathy assured me that this isn’t going to change.”
It looks like Cathy and his president and chief operating officer, Tim Tassopoulos, are going to have to get their story straight. Tassopoulos communicated quite a different message in his deliberate announcement in Bisnow to the LGBT bullies:
‘There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are,’ Chick-fil-A President and Chief Operating Officer Tim Tassopoulos said in an interview with Bisnow. ‘There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A [critical of our support of anti-gay-marriage charities], and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.’ … Future partners could include faith-based and non-faith-based charities, but the company said none of the organizations have anti-LGBT positions. … After years of ‘taking it on the chin,’ as a Chick-fil-A executive told Bisnow, the latest round of headlines was impossible to ignore. This time, it was impeding the company’s growth.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was quite right in his comment on this interview: “Chick-fil-A didn’t just switch their giving practices, they broadcasted it. They made a conscious choice to draw attention to this very public divorce from two Bible-believing charities. And then, in a calculated move, announced their support was going to an organization that, on its website, openly and proudly supports everything about the LGBT community.”
Chick-fil-A calculated that, by making this announcement, the LGBT bullies would ease up. Big miscalculation. Nor does it cohere with making the zealous LGBT organization Covenant House one of three main recipients of a $9 million Chick-fil-A donation, replacing among others the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, The Salvation Army, and the Paul Anderson Youth Home — all organizations LGBT bullies have targeted for expressions of Christianity.
Chick-fil-A Sends Sin Tax to LGBT-Linked Groups
Covenant House boasted about its participation in NYC’s Gay Pride Parade in March 2019, saying, “Celebrating PRIDE! This past Sunday our youth, staff and volunteers enjoyed the large crowds, rainbow colors and festive music at New York City’s Pride Parade. Pride is all about love, acceptance, celebration. … We encourage kids to be exactly who they are and we celebrate their uniqueness and individuality.” (For more pictures go here, here, and here.)
Every one of its 16 U.S. and Canadian Covenant House programs has undergone the assessment of Cyndi Lauper’s LGBT-fascist “True Colors” to insure they are fully on board with the entire homosexual and transgender agenda. To work there, one must affirm transgenderism and homosexual practice as part of a young person’s “authentic self.” “Even though we are educating staff and think they are on the same page, they may not be,” said Renee Trincanello, associate executive director at Covenant House Florida.
What do we know of Covenant House’s partner “True Colors”? True Colors “creates a welcoming environment for LGBTQ youth by using visual cues like safe space stickers, all gender restroom signs, and pronoun buttons.” That’s right, first-order business at Covenant House is everyone declaring the pronouns by which they want to be known, thereby coercing all others to accept faux transgender identity through mandatory speech. There can never be too much coercive indoctrination when pushing LGBT ideology.
Covenant House proudly declares on its website that “LGBTQ young people” should not only be kept “safe, housed,” but also “celebrated … not just accepted … for who they are” (emphasis theirs). So Chick-fil-A is not remaining neutral in the culture war but is siding with organizations that promote what God views as abhorrent. Yet CFA’s Vision Statement says the company exists first and foremost “to glorify God.”
Covenant House is also hardly a cash-strapped organization. According to GuideStar, it had gross receipts of $108.6 million in 2018, with donors including Walmart, Delta, PayPal, and the National Basketball Association. That doesn’t include all its various chapters in different states, provinces, and cities in the U.S. and Canada.
The New York chapter alone had gross receipts of $23.4 million, for instance, and California had $15.8 million. It has been raking in this kind of money for decades. Did CFA feel bad that Covenant House was raking in only this kind of dough, or was this a public relations outreach to mollify LGBT bullies?
Covenant House’s founder, Bruce Ritter, was a Franciscan priest. In 1989, The New York Post reported in deeply researched article that Ritter had allegedly sexually molested young men at Covenant House for years. Lawsuits by his victims against Covenant House are still ongoing. Apparently, too, this once-Catholic organization now takes young women to abortion clinics.
One would think CFA would carefully vet an organization to which it plans to donate millions of dollars. The worrisome concern is that it probably did.
These Aren’t the Only Problems at Chick-fil-A
As it seeks to expand in Canadian markets, Chick-fil-A has hired an international lobbying firm, Navigator, that according to Charles McVety, president of the Institute for Canadian Values, is the “number one gay lobbying firm” in Canada, responsible “for successfully pushing for homosexual ‘marriage’ at the same time … other Christian conservatives [were working] to oppose it.”
According to the Toronto Star, CFA plans to open 15 restaurants in the Toronto area but has received a cold reception. So Navigator wants to “facilitate open dialogue and foster long-term relationships with key decision makers in areas of interest to their operations.” Clearly, this is part of CFA’s overall efforts to blunt criticisms from LGBT activists.
Compromise has been going on for a while. It is just now getting more blatant. Back in 2015, Chick-fil-A was listed as a sponsor for an LGBT film festival. By 2011, CFA had stopped giving to LGBT bullies’ big-target organizations, such as Family Research Council, Exodus International, and Eagle Forum, in an obvious effort to mollify critics.
Chick-fil-A had a record $3 billion in earnings for 2018. Apparently, that was not enough. What does one call prostituting one’s values for the sake of still more money and more social approval, dumping one’s loyal lover in the process?
I can tell you what Old Testament prophets would have said: Chick-fil-A is now officially a greedy and cowardly corporate whore, like nearly all other large corporations. Its betrayal now is worse than if it had started out with such an MO. It would have been better if it had never existed.
At the very least, Christians should no longer give Chick-fil-A special support. They should also take a good long while before patronizing CFA again, if ever. Christians need to send a message loud and clear. Apparently CFA’s president really likes “clarity.”
What Chick-fil-A Can Do to Clear Its Name
At this point, CFA’s primary customer service base is going to need to hear a consistent and clear word from the company and see some action.
1. The COO should reverse himself unequivocally and clearly. Preferably, he should be fired for making the foolhardy executive decision of the decade that alienated CFA’s chief customer base. I don’t see how his evangelical customers can trust an organization he heads. In case you are worried about how he will survive financially if he’s terminated, he’s a billionaire. He’ll do just fine.
2. Chick-fil-A must dump Covenant House, because it is a rabid LGBT organization that corrupts children and doesn’t reflect CFA’s Vision Statement “to glorify God.”
3. Chick-fil-A must reinstate as a major recipient of its donations a Christian organization that clearly does not affirm homosexual practice or transgenderism. The promise that Christian groups will be “considered” in the future (without an explicit indication that groups targeted slanderously by “LGBTQ” bullies are included, by the way) is not enough. “Will be considered” is a meaningless gesture to appease CFA’s primary customary service base while still doing the bidding of the LGBT bullies.
At present, I see the likelihood of Chick-fil-A doing even one, let alone all three, of these things as slim to none. Astonish me.
