A Chicken Chain’s Corporate Ethos Is Questioned by Gay Rights Advocates – NYTimes.com

I haven’t been comfortable with these people for a long time…

I don’t eat there anymore.  Not just because our politics clash, but because the sandwiches are greasy and gross…

Instead, if I’m going to sin, give me a Chicken Biscuit from Mrs. Winner’s any day….

Nicknamed “Jesus chicken” by jaded secular fans and embraced by Evangelical Christians, Chick-fil-A is among only a handful of large American companies with conservative religion built into its corporate ethos. But recently its ethos has run smack into the gay rights movement. A Pennsylvania outlet’s sponsorship of a February marriage seminar by one of that state’s most outspoken groups against homosexuality lit up gay blogs around the country. Students at some universities have also begun trying to get the chain removed from campuses.

“If you’re eating Chick-fil-A, you’re eating anti-gay,” one headline read. The issue spread into Christian media circles, too.

The outcry moved the company’s president, Dan T. Cathy, to post a video on the company’s Facebook fan page to “communicate from the heart that we serve and value all people and treat everyone with honor, dignity and respect,” said a company spokesman, Don Perry.

Providing sandwiches and brownies for a local seminar is not an endorsement or a political stance, Mr. Cathy says in the video. But he adds that marriage has long been a focus of the chain, which S. Truett Cathy, his deeply religious father, began in 1967.

The donation has some fans cheering and others forcing themselves to balance their food desires against their personal beliefs.

via A Chicken Chain’s Corporate Ethos Is Questioned by Gay Rights Advocates – NYTimes.com.