Is It Ever OK To Serve Chick-Fil-A? An ATL Debate

ATL editors David Lat and Joe Patrice debate: When is a chicken sandwich just a chicken sandwich?

Joe here. You’re minding your own business, checking your law school email in lieu of listening to the lecture, when an invitation catches your eye. It’s from the local Federalist Society chapter and they’re hosting an event on marriage equality. Fed Soc puts on good events, and unlike a lot of the issues out there, marriage equality is an issue where the organization might have a fair and respectful debate. After all, this is the organization of Ted Olson and Richard Posner as much as it’s the organization of Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. There’s room under that ideological tent. But you open the email to see an oversized Chick-fil-A logo. Shock jock tactics.

To say that Staci and I disapproved would be an understatement.

Now imagine the event were not about marriage equality. Would it be acceptable to serve Chick-fil-A at a talk on gun control? On eminent domain? Is there ever a time where Chick-fil-A is a “content neutral” noshing option?

I say no. David says yes. We let you in on our argument about this….

We’ve already discussed at length the (im)propriety of serving Chick-fil-A at a gay marriage debate. Let’s move on to a new hypothetical: a law school club (or the school itself) serving Chick-fil-A to students at any old event. This hypo was prompted by a student at a law school other than Northwestern Law who, after reading about the Northwestern Fed Soc event, complained to us about numerous student groups at her school serving Chick-fil-A without realizing how upsetting it was to her. Should these groups cease and desist, or is Chick-fil-A actually A-OK?

JOE PATRICE

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Chick-fil-A? No, just… no.

Look, people who own restaurants do some pretty objectionable stuff. Domino’s made its founder, Tom Monaghan, massively wealthy, and he used that money to fund radical pro-life groups. Like, not the more “reasonable” pro-life organizations, but Operation Rescue in the 80s types. And that is troubling — almost as troubling as funding Ave Maria Law — but if somebody served Domino’s in 1997 (he sold the company in 1998), only the most egregious P.C. thug would take that as an offensive political statement. It would have been an offensive culinary statement.

But Chick-fil-A is a different matter. While Monaghan (along with other politically active food peddlers) tried to keep his advocacy away from the brand name, Chick-fil-A made their political opposition to gay people a focal point of their brand. The company’s glee when anti-gay organizations rushed to pack their stores moved the company from holding a controversial political opinion to becoming a symbol for those engaged in virulent gay-bashing. Even their attempt to backtrack couldn’t get out of its own way and doubled-down on its opposition to gays.

And why does the company that embraced anti-gay bigotry to make money have the right to make the victims of that bigotry forgive and forget on their word alone? Opening a can of worms does not imply the power to close it.

The most common dismissal is that this is just a sandwich and there are more important things to worry about. But divorcing “reality” from the discourse around it and the effect that it has on others is the province of the privileged. Even if you aren’t anti-gay, when you eat Chick-fil-A, you’re saying, “I understand this is viewed as a symbol of bigotry, but nonetheless I’ve decided that doesn’t matter to me,” which is really a pretty important political statement. To quote Professor Jessica Kulynych:

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[I]t is contestations at the micro-level, over the intricacies of everyday life, that provide the raw material for global domination, and the key to disrupting global strategies of domination. Therefore, the location of political participation extends way beyond the formal apparatus of government, or the formal organization of the workplace, to the intimacy of daily actions and iterations.

The language may be a bit a bit dramatic, but basically, most of us are never going to have an opportunity to directly change the political landscape for equality, but just saying no to an entity that endeavors to profit off politicizing its product is an action we can take.

Or maybe I’m still mad Chick-fil-A ended the Peach Bowl.

DAVID LAT

Earlier this week, I found myself in Chicago to speak at the Clio Cloud Conference (a great event, by the way). I love Chicago (as long as it’s not February), not just for the architecture and the theater scene, but because it means I get to eat Chick-fil-A. In fact, on Monday night I ate at Chick-fil-A — maybe the same store that catered the Northwestern event.

As the only one of Above the Law’s four full-time writer/editors who might be getting gay-married, I am a firm believer in marriage equality. But I am also a firm believer in Chick-fil-A’s deliciousness — and I think it’s perfectly fine to serve it at law school events (even without purchasing chicken offsets from Ted Frank). Here is why:

1. Chick-fil-A has changed its ways. The company has actually exited the marriage debate and effectively stopped funding anti-LGBT groups and causes (except for a de minimis contribution to a Christian athletic group with anti-LGBT leadership policies). So you don’t need to worry that money spent on Chick-fil-A is funding “hate.”

Joe complains that the company, in trying to extricate itself from this controversy, actually “doubled-down on its opposition to gays.” He cites for this proposition a Forbes piece quoting CEO Dan Cathy reiterating his personal opposition to marriage equality. I wouldn’t characterize that as “doubling down”; it was simply Cathy stating that he hasn’t changed his personal beliefs on marriage — which is, of course, his right. Last time I checked, we still enjoy religious freedom in this country.

2. Chick-fil-A should be rewarded for changing its ways. What’s the point of a boycott? To punish behavior we disapprove of, and to get companies to stop engaging in that behavior. In this case, Chick-fil-A stopped the bad behavior in question (and then some, with Dan Cathy palling around with gay activists).

If people continue to boycott Chick-fil-A, such boycotts might be less effective in the future. Executives at a company targeted for a boycott will say to themselves, “Chick-fil-A caved to its opponents and still got boycotted, so why should we change our policy?”

3. Marriage-equality supporters should be gracious victors. People upset over Chick-fil-A remind me of that Japanese soldier who didn’t know World War II was over. As Jennifer Graham of the Boston Globe puts it:

Continuing to hold a grudge against Chick-fil-A is, in some ways, as productive as railing against the Confederate flag. There will always be pockets of resistance, but by and large, that war is done. Of people younger than 34, seven in 10 support same-sex marriage, and that number is only going to grow.

And as Ross Douthat notes, it won’t be long before the U.S. Supreme Court “will be forced to acknowledge the logic of its own jurisprudence on same-sex marriage and redefine marriage to include gay couples in all 50 states.” In fact, it could happen as early as this coming Term. (Come to our SCOTUS preview event next month and listen to experts predict what the Court might do.)

So what should those of us who support marriage equality do? We should win graciously. We should lower the temperature surrounding this controversy. We should not humiliate supporters of traditional marriage by dragging them behind a chariot like a vanquished Cleopatra. We should let them have their views — and their food. To paraphrase Marie Antoinette, let them EAT MOR CHIKIN.

Sometimes a chicken sandwich is just a chicken sandwich — a very delicious chicken sandwich, perfectly suitable for serving at law school events. And maybe even my wedding; wouldn’t passed plates of Chick-n-Minis be perfect for the post-ceremony cocktail hour? If anyone from Chick-fil-A corporate is reading this — perhaps Carrie J. Kurlander, VP for public relations — you know where to reach me.

JOE PATRICE (rebuttal)

The crux of Lat’s defense entirely hinges on the idea that Chick-fil-A has changed or that LGBT successes render the opposition embraceable as moot. I’m not buying that. Let’s just employ David’s straightforward structure.

1. Chick-fil-A has changed its ways. Dan Cathy still has religious freedom, but like John Rocker cried “freedom of speech” when people didn’t like his bigotry, the right to hold and express opinions does not extend to the right to have people agree to give you money (unsurprisingly, Rocker wrote a juvenile essay bemoaning how criticism of Cathy proved the “myth of free speech”). And while Cathy has toned down his financial support, which is lovely, he continues to publicly tie his brand to objecting to gay rights a la the Forbes piece cited above. To bring John Rocker back for a moment, it wasn’t his financial support for objectionable causes that made him worth jeering, it was his desire to be a public symbol for backward thinking. Basically, the money is only a part of the problem. Cathy’s “signing statement” to this new pledge shows he just doesn’t get it. For that matter the fact that a club would still unabashedly associate “anti-gay” with Chick-fil-A shows the message is a fig leaf at best.

And given the tepid nature of the reversal, I’d reiterate that it’s awfully presumptuous for a person in power, who made a bucketload of cash fanning the flames, to think that “hey, just kidding,” should translate to “forgive and forget.” He’s withheld fiduciary support, but is still telling magazines that he’s against the gays and supporting him is that. Endorsing that kind of privileged attitude rewards disingenuous public relations stunts.

2. Chick-fil-A should be rewarded for changing its ways. This is an excellent point, to the extent one views Chick-fil-A as having substantively changed. If Dan Cathy took steps, not just to “stop publicly cheerleading” anti-gay movements, but instead to do something that would make the thousands of happy customers — including Northwestern’s Fed Soc crew — from continuing to firmly associating Chick-fil-A with their commitment to the anti-gay cause, that would be something. That has obviously not happened.

3. Marriage-equality supporters should be gracious victors. Lat quotes this sentence:

Continuing to hold a grudge against Chick-fil-A is, in some ways, as productive as railing against the Confederate flag.

Yeah, actually, and we should rail against the Confederate flag. It’s troubling that there’s a segment of the country that thinks that we should all be cool with the Confederate flag. No one’s walking up to the Jewish community and saying, “isn’t time we get over this whole Swastika thing?” And for good reason. These were symbols of people who went to war over their right to enslave and exterminate people. That doesn’t have a statute of limitations.

It is true that marriage equality is probably coming sooner rather than later. But just like winning the Civil War or winning WWII didn’t rob the symbols of the opposing ideologies of their power, marriage equality doesn’t make it cool to gin up business by embracing anti-gay populace who rally around your product.

Again, eating Chick-fil-A is a political statement — even if it’s a statement that you’ve decided not to care. Sometimes there are issues bigger than whether or not something is tasty.

Earlier: Fed Soc Chapter Offers Chick-fil-A At Gay Marriage Event With Disastrous Results