Here are the facts on Chick-fil-A’s harmful giving.
On the Family Research Council and criminalization of same-gender sexual activity:
From the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. (Some may attack the credibility of the Southern Poverty Law center as “liberal”. If they do, please direct them here to learn what an Ad Hominem attack is and why it is invalid. Those who wish to challenge the information presented should challenge the information, not engage in name-calling.)
“In March 2008, [Family Research Council Senior Fellow Peter] Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: ‘I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.’ He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, ‘I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.’ ‘So we should outlaw gay behavior?’ Matthews asked. ‘Yes,’ Sprigg replied. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.”
This man is no mere functionary, as Senior Fellows are in charge of policy, and he was speaking in his capacity as an FRC representative.
On Chick-Fil-A’s other giving against LGBT equality NOT related to same-sex marriage:
My initial claim was very small compared to the extent of Chick-Fil-A’s hurtful giving, which encompasses far more than “protecting marriage” or giving to straightforward Christian charities. Through its WinShape foundation, Chick-Fil-A has given to nearly a dozen organizations that do a lot more than fight LGBT marriage. Here is a publicly available 2009 tax form that shows the WinShape Foundation’s giving to the following organizations (you have to scroll down toward the end):
- Marriage & Family Legacy Fund
- Fellowship Of Christian Athletes
- National Christian Foundation
- Focus On The Family
- Eagle Forum
- Exodus
- Family Research Council
All of these organizations are anti-Marriage Equality and some are against LGBT quality in other ways, but Focus on the Family and Exodus deserve special attention.
- Focus on the Family is notorious for its opposition to adoption rights for same-sex couples. It has most recently misrepresented research to suggest that children from the homes of coupled lesbians were incapable of raising healthy children.
- Focus on the Family opposes hate crimes legislation that protects LGBT people, calling such legislation “evil”.
- Focus on the Family opposes protections for LGBT people from being fired simply for being gay (pdf), opposing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because it supposedly gave us “special rights”.
- Yes, these groups do engage in other activity intended to strengthen the family, but those other things do not diminish the fact that they have a very clear political agenda that is directly detrimental to your LGBT friends, not only in the realm of marriage, but in the realms of employment, adoption, and citizenship.
- Exodus International is in a special category because its “ministry” promotes the harmful, painful fiction that people can “pray away the gay” – a fiction now repudiated by its very founders. Despite this blow to their credibility, doubled down, with a trip to Uganda to promote the deadly anti-gay agenda there (They have since apologized for the Uganda trip, but the damage was done).
These aren’t a few dollars to a few organizations that happen to disagree with us on marriage. We’re talking about thousands of dollars to organizations that consistently trade in damaging, brutish, and even deadly stuff, all under a camouflage of innocuous-sounding names and sepia-tone websites dressed up to look suitable for corporate giving and estate planning.
Wayne Self is an award-winning writer, composer, and music director with deep spiritual and historical roots in rural Louisiana.
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