Psycho Chicken

This Chick-fil-A thing has really been bothering me over the past few days. Mostly for the reasons you'd expect, but I'm troubled by some of the backlash coming from my own side, and I'm hoping that by writing about it, I can get a clearer sense of where the fowl line (see what I did there?) really is.

I've been in one of these places exactly once- going on a decade ago, in a southern Ohio shopping mall, about as close as you could find one at the time to these parts. (Silly me, I ordered the healthier sammich than the traditional one dripping in lard- but the waffle fries were good.)  Years after that was when I first heard just how homophobic their owner is and how he was funding some really bad causes in support of his position- but it was only in a recent interview, where he got really in-your-face about it, that the hue and cry rose up about protesting them.  Mayors of some left-leaning cities put out proclamations saying, "You're not welcome here," at least one Chicago pol threatened to rip a zoning permit from a new location there, and a Kiss-In was planned for yesterday.

That's when the reactionaries reacted, as they do. First, they wrapped themselves in the First Amendment (the same one which they don't like talking about when it comes to separation of church and state) and said these government officials were trying to take away their rights of free speech. Then, they rallied their troops and pre-empted the Kiss-In with an "Appreciation Day" earlier in the week where the supposedly silent majority all turned out to eat their chicken and fry away the gay.

The week then ended with one of the locations getting vandalized, and righties didn't care that there was total disapproval from the GLBT community over the use of such tactics; it was more intolerance of their white-meat Christian minority oxymoronic beliefs and they were being "bullied."

That's right.  One conservative friend of mine posted an blog piece where a fundie pastor accused gays of doing that. 

You should read it in its entirety, but I'll try to highlight some of its points. It's titled, and its text begins with the words,

Dear Homosexual Friend.

That's not a good start. If you're seeking respect from the holder of an opposing viewpoint, addressing them by a non-preferred term is a step back right off the bat. I did not start this post off by titling it "Dear Holy Roller Bigot Cracker Friend." (The actual title refers to a parody of a Talking Heads song, if you must know.) 

But I'll get past that.  Here's his lede:

     I’m writing you this note because I just ate Chic-Fil-A.  Some of my Christian friends around the country also just finished eating Chic-Fil-A.  Some of my other Christian friends got mad at those of us who ate Chic-Fil-A because they said that you, my homosexual friend and neighbor, may view us as intolerant, hateful bigots. 

    I wrote you to personally inform you that my friends who ate chicken today did so not because they hate you but because they hate bullies. 

Yup, how's that light loafer feel on the other foot, homosexual?  That's the charge; here's the evidence.

Basically because a Christian man shared his religious views some people with governmental control decided they would intimidate and harass this man’s business by using the power of the government.  That’s bullying.  Bullying is bad.  The 1st Amendment protects personal speech from government punishment.  These Mayors weren’t playing nice so a lot of Christians wanted to tell the government to back off.

That "Christian man" did more than share his religious views. He was outed for making sizable financial donations to groups dedicated to stripping citizens of existing rights, under duly enacted statutes or Constitutions; and to groups which declare these citizens to be "sick" and try to lock them away in efforts to "cure" them.  That's far closer to bullying than a mayoral proclamation that has as much force of law behind it as any other bullshit mayoral proclamation issued in front of rolling cameras.

Next, our author pulls a double-axel with a death spiral worthy of a perfect 10 at the Olympics: he tries to distance himself from the Fred Phelps crazies because, well, they picketed him once:

I’m sure at times you feel that people who claim the name of Christ are bullies.  I’m sure you’ve seen that inbred group of people known as Westboro Baptist Church on TV.  They are not Baptist and they aren’t a church.  They’re bullies.... Can I let you in on a secret?  I was actually picketed by those hateful people once.  My crime?  Attending a worship service at Dr. Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church.

I know this is a variant on the "some of my best friends are...." defense, but it's so convoluted I can't begin to do the math needed to explain why.  What I do know, though, is this: they hate fags. YOU hate fags.  And the organizations that Dan Cathy contributes to? They hate fags far more effectively than either Fred's inbreds do or you do, because they've got the organization and the financial resources to do it. They are among the crowd that would herd gay people into concentration camps- or that encourage parents to literally beat the gay out of their boys if they show any signs of being effeminate.  And those examples aren't from lone-wolf crazies on the fringes of the anti-gay movement. Those are their CLERGY.

Still feeling bullied?

The author then goes on to explain why he became a Westboro bullying target himself- because Jerry Falwell was, after all, a pretty nice guy if you got to know him.

Anyway, do you know what Dr. Falwell had done to deserve getting picketed by the bullies of Westboro?  He invited gay leader and president of Soul Force, Mel White, and about 300 homosexual activists to Thomas Road and Liberty University for a discussion.  Dr. Falwell fed them and set up civil conversations on the campus.  I was there.  It was peaceful.  Isn’t that crazy?  Gasp!  Shock!  My guess is that you didn’t even know that happened.  Funny how that works huh?

Yeah, it is funny. Know what also is? That Chick-fil-A founder's been invited to have just such a discussion over his attitudes and contributions, to which, to my knowledge, he has yet to respond:

Marci Alt doesn't want to take down Chick-fil-A's anti-gay COO. She wants to break bread with him and has launched a petition to encourage him to accept the invitation.

"I'm not really a fighter," Marci Alt says from her office in Atlanta, Georgia. "I would rather have a conversation."

Alt is 47 and married to her partner of 12 years, Marlysa. They're mothers to a 2-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl. And they've decided to invite Chick-fil-A COO Dan Cathy to dinner.

"I probably have the exact same kind of family values that he has," Alt said. "He just doesn't think I deserve to have the same rights that he has."

...Instead of joining the picketers, Alt, who runs the Gay Community Yellow Pages, launched a Change.org petition turned dinner invite to get Cathy's attention. She wants the COO to see their families' similarities — to meet her loving wife, her bumbling toddler, and her little girl who competes in gymnastics and cheerleading.

It's got over 4,000 signatures on it already. Maybe my non-homosexual friend will sign; I just did.

Or maybe we can just agree to disagree, but let's agree completely and globally. As I told the Facebook world yesterday:

Tell ya what: you can eat whatever chicken you want, wherever you want, without protesting or picketing or shaming, and you can let my daughter manage her reproductive life however she wants without protesting or picketing or shaming.

Deal?

Pieces of a life.

I went out and about three times today- an 8 a.m. workout, a noonish office visit, and for interviews at church right before 3. At all of those times, the final day of our neighbor's "estate sale" was in progress, and with each pass of her corner, I saw notable and memorable signs of her life being bundled up and carted off by antique dealers and bargain hunters.

The washer and dryer. Assorted pieces of dining room furniture. A well-worn wooden crate, possibly a hope chest from decades of hopes ago. Stuffed into trunks, strapped into truck beds, and roped onto roofs- all headed to new places and new lives.

We've been through this around here before, with other elderly neighbors either barely outliving their estate sales or not quite doing so. But this one from the past few days sold off the tangible pieces of a friend's life.  We washed our clothes in that washer during at least one hot-water-heater emergency. We sat in those dining room chairs. There were at least a couple of things we'd given her over the years which doubtless got tagged and sold along with everything else. That's not a complaint (we had weeks, if not months, to pull them back); but it is a connection to the sadness that comes through this kind of transition of home and life.

There's no "open house" cap on the For Sale sign yet; I suspect that will be at least a week off.  There will, now, likely be renewed efforts to clean and repair and pray for someone to come along and take this suddenly empty hulk of a home off the family's hands.

It was eighteen years ago next week that we became Sally's neighbor. Our daughter grew up always knowing her as a friend, and a safe place, and an emergency contact on dozens of forms. That will never change no matter how much of the stuff in her life- or ours- gets backed up out the door and headed for places unknown.