Chick-fil-A, the nation’s third-largest fast-food chain, made headlines recently with its decision to cease donating to Christian organizations that disapprove of homosexuality.
“We don’t want our intent and our work to be encumbered by someone else’s politics or cultural war,” said Rodney Bullard, vice president of corporate responsibility and executive director of the Chick-fil-A Foundation.
One might get the impression from Bullard’s remarks that the three groups Chick-fil-A is no longer supporting (the Salvation Army, the Paul Anderson Youth Home, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes) are hotbeds of anti-LGBT activism — and that the ones the company continues to sponsor are bland, middle-of-the-road groups with no agenda whatsoever.
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One would, however, be incorrect. The groups on the outs with Chick-fil-A were hardly players in the culture wars at all; they simply upheld traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality within the confines of their missions. Those that remain in the chicken chain’s good graces, on the other hand, are often far more political, and many of them support abortion, LGBT privileges, and other left-wing causes, reported Townhall columnist Ryan Bomberger.
For example, Chick-fil-A donates to Covenant House, an agency founded by Catholics that provides services to homeless and runaway youth. “Don’t let the Catholic association fool you, though,” noted Bomberger. “Covenant House … takes pride in its promotion of all things LGBTQ. They even marched in the New York ‘Gay Pride’ parade to show their inclusivity cred.”
Chick-fil-A also contributes to the YWCA, which, although it began as the Young Women’s Christian Association, has very little to do with Christianity these days. Instead, it promotes a variety of left-wing causes such as abortion-on-demand (including a partnership with Planned Parenthood), LGBT rights, “social justice,” and “sustainable development.”
In 2017, Chick-fil-A gave $50,000 to the Pace Center for Girls, an education and advocacy organization for troubled teenage girls. Unfortunately, the group also considers promoting abortion part of its mission, and so it “featured radical pro-abortion feminist Gloria Steinem (the ‘I Had An Abortion’ activist who declared that birthing children is the ‘fundamental cause of climate change’) as their keynote speaker for their most recent girls’ Summit,” observed Bomberger.
In addition, Chick-fil-A has donated to Usher’s New Look, a progressive activist organization founded by recording artist Usher, and continues to fund Chris 180, which Bomberger describes as “a pro-LGBT behavioral health and child welfare service agency.” Indeed, the group is so far in the tank for the LGBT cause that it received an award from the Human Rights Campaign, a far-left homosexual-rights organization.
Junior Achievement (JA), an education and entrepreneurship organization for youth, gets hundreds of thousands of dollars every year from Chick-fil-A. While the group certainly does much good, it has also gotten into the leftist political game in recent years. In 2016, JA of Georgia joined a coalition to oppose a bill to prohibit the Peach State from discriminating against people who oppose same-sex “marriage.”
Perhaps the most outrageous of all Chick-fil-A’s gifts to the Left is its 2017 donation of $2,500 to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). In 2012, the SPLC’s designation of the Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group” — which still stands — led one Floyd Lee Corkins to storm FRC’s D.C. headquarters, armed with a handgun, 50 rounds of ammunition, and a supply of Chick-fil-A sandwiches. According to the Washington Examiner, Corkins told Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents that “he went to the FRC to kill people and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his victims’ faces” because both FRC and Chick-fil-A opposed same-sex “marriage.”
Chick-fil-A executives may think they can fool the public into believing they’re no longer funding agenda-driven organizations, but the fact is they have simply stopped funding those groups that, by their very existence, drive the “woke” Left up the wall while continuing to support groups that would welcome their company’s demise. “Chikins” that are so easily cowed by the Left may find themselves in the fryer before long.
Photo: ivanastar/iStock Unreleased/Getty Images
Michael Tennant is a freelance writer and regular contributor to The New American.
