Would you like a free kid’s meal with your adult meal twice a week, and fun entertainment for your kids on Saturdays? Maybe $3 desserts just $1 on Wednesdays gets your eye-and stomach. Then there’s my personal favorite for a broke college student such as myself-buy one, get one free sandwiches or chicken nuggets twice a week just by showing your student ID?
This is what my local Chick Fil A offers, and I can guarantee you that there is no other restaurant chain that has so many specials on nearly every day of the week (that day being Sunday, when CFA closes). But there are other things, too that I love. For one, I have never been in a fast food place so clean; I’m not grossed out when I use the bathroom! There’s genuine hospitality upon every worker’s face, and when people tell you “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome” because CFA believes it is a pleasure to serve others, you can’t doubt their sincerity. Plus, the food is of great quality! You get your money’s worth there. Because of this incredible environment, I often invite my international student friends to come with me there, saying, “This is place is something you HAVE to try while you’re in the States!” After saying this and going with him there, my friend YongJin “Jo” replied, “Caroline, let’s make a Chick Fil A in Korea together!”
In 2011, rumors started around Florida State University that there would be a Chick Fil A built on campus. Meanwhile, the FSU’s student newspaper voted CFA as “Tallahassee’s Best Fast Food Place.” When these rumors about the “best fast food place” in our city were confirmed, most FSU students were super excited! Yet a small uproar was heard from my student body-an accusation that Chick Fil A discriminated against homosexuals and would possibly refuse to serve them. This uproar made it all the way to the FSU Student Government Association. Finally, at the end of the Fall 2011 semester students were asked to vote on whether or not they thought that having a Chick Fil A on campus would go against our university’s policy on anti-discrimination.
I voted “No.”
Now let me explain. If Chick Fil A was actually showing discrimination against homosexuals, I would NOT have voted no. I don’t care about how much I love their chocolate milkshakes or lemonade, saying “You can’t eat here” because you’re gay is WRONG. Heck, I wouldn’t even eat at Chick Fil A if they did that.
No, we need to see why people are falsely accusing CFA of being discriminatory. In 2009, Chick Fil A’s charitable organization, WinShape, donated a large sum of money to conservative, family-based organizations such as Focus on the Family. Focus on the Family is a non-profit organization that promotes evangelical Christian values; one of many of those includes belief in traditional marriage. Focus on the Family promotes marriage between a man and a woman and encourages it, but that’s it. They have never said “Let’s go shun all of the gays of the world and hate them.” Being Christians, they have expressed their beliefs against homosexuality using the Bible, yet have also expressed using that same holy book that they are to love everyone and treat everyone equally. Other organizations that CFA supported -Fellowship of Christian Athletes, National Christian Foundation, etc. have the same views.
The problem is that people confuse disagreement with hatred and discrimination. They assume that because you say, “Hey, I think that marriage should be for a man and a woman” means that you must have a raging hatred of gays. If this is the case, then I must be a hypocrite, because I don’t agree with homosexuality yet have several friends who are gay/lesbian/bi. I’m a Bible believing Christian, yet I made friends with the openly gay guy next to me in the computer lab-woopsee! I support Focus on the Family, yet I gave out free snow cones outside of an AIDS clinic once a week one summer and made friends with a couple of gay patients there. I think I made my point. Please don’t confuse my disagreement for hatred, nor do the same thing with Chick Fil A. “We have no agenda against anyone. While my family and I believe in the Biblical definition of marriage, we love and respect anyone who disagrees,” president Dan Cathy explained in a written statement.
If my favorite fast food place really did discriminate, then I’d have some beef with them (pun intended). But they don’t, and as I’ve been saying a lot these days, “People throw rocks at things that shine.” With somewhere as perfect as Chick Fil A, people are just trying to find something bad to say about it. By the way, we students at FSU voted that Chick Fil A is NOT discriminating against gays in the Fall 2011 voting session.
It looks like that the only thing that will not be served at Chick Fil A..is a hamburger.
