Fed Soc Chapter Offers Chick-fil-A At Gay Marriage Event With Disastrous Results
Chick-fil-A: because it tastes like hate.
Every year, law students find themselves at odds with each other thanks to the convenience of school-wide listservs. Where else can you spew all of your vitriol at classmates with just the click of a button? Welcome to law school, folks.
Perhaps the most storied law school listserv belongs to Northwestern University School of Law, where the “PC Police” live to serve. As we’ve noted in the past, “[t]he school seems to have a number of students who are easily offended. Some of the kids there overreact at the slightest provocation.”
So what happens when something that’s actually offensive occurs? For example, what do you think would happen if a conservative student group like the Federalist Society were to host a debate on same-sex marriage, with food catered by Chick-fil-A? As you can imagine, students lost their minds…
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Yesterday afternoon, the Northwestern Law Federalist Society sent out an email inviting everyone on the student listserv to attend their same-sex marriage debate. Here’s the event flyer that was distributed:
Yes, the student leaders of this chapter of a conservative organization decided it would be a good idea to serve Chick-fil-A at their same-sex marriage debate. It doesn’t happen often, but the menu can make a normative statement. As Northwestern’s chapter of the Federalist Society should know, serving Chick-fil-A is that kind of statement. If the chapter served Chick-fil-A at “Why Is President Obama Such A Tyrannical Poopyhead?” (no doubt slated for October), the symbolism would be clear. Chick-fil-A made their political opposition to gay people a focal point of their brand. The civil rights movement had Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and the anti-gay movement has illiterate cows. That disparity actually says a lot.
This qualifies as first-rate trolling.
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This is an event about the definition of marriage — an event with a headliner explaining why marriage is between a man and a woman. No one accidentally orders Chick-fil-A for that event, nor does one accidentally send out an invite eschewing the traditional “lunch will be provided” in favor of a logo almost the same size as the description of the event. The most ardent Devil’s Advocate has to say, “Yeah… they were really going for that lowest common denominator of gay-bashing, huh?”
It’s important to remember that student chapters of the Federalist Society make their own calls on this stuff. The national Federalist Society organization leadership — and the local chapter at your law school (assuming you aren’t at Northwestern) — doesn’t necessarily condone this behavior. Indeed, they probably don’t even know what’s going on in Illinois. So don’t blame them for what’s happened. But that doesn’t free them from their obligation to address this issue now that it’s out there.
Speaking only for ourselves, we call on the national leadership of the Federalist Society to issue a statement disavowing the marketing decisions of the Northwestern chapter. Not only is this the right thing to do for an organization of which Ted Olson is a founding member and that increasingly represents a more libertarian, Pauline membership, but it’s the right thing to do for a serious scholarly organization that wants to be known for ideas rather than cartoon antics. Looking the other way when something designed as hate-baiting is done in your name evinces organizational cowardice at best and tacit approval at worst.
Since one of the biggest stories in the country is how Roger Goodell’s tepid response to wrongdoing tarnished his reputation and the reputation of the NFL, the importance of sanctioning bodies to respond swiftly and decisively to condemn negative practices that reflect on an organization is supercharged.
We’ve reached out to the Federalist Society’s national office. Given the newsworthiness of this story, we couldn’t wait more than a couple of hours for a response, but we hope to hear something soon and will obviously (and gladly) update this story if and when we hear back. (UPDATE (9/25/2014, 6 p.m.): Lat comes to the defense of Chick-fil-A in this ATL Debate.)
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Needless to say, students flocked to the listserv in protest, and oh boy, did they protest. On the next page, we collect the greatest hits of the listserv battle royal….
