In mid-July, Dan T. Cathy, the president of the nation’s second largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain, Chick-fil-A, was interviewed by the Biblical Recorder, an online journal for Baptists in North Carolina. In the interview, Cathy confirmed that his company is a proponent of the traditional family unit. Although Chick-fil-A has long been known to support Christian values — every Chick-fil-A restaurant is closed on Sundays so that employees can attend church if they want — Cathy’s interview fueled a controversy on the topic of same-sex marriage.
“We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit,” Dan Cathy said. “We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”
In addition, Chick-fil-A is known to have made numerous donations to organizations that strongly disapproves of homosexuality. In 2011, it donated food to a marriage seminar that was held by one of Pennsylvania’s biggest organizations against homosexuality, and later, the Cathy family donated millions of dollars to organizations that provide therapy to change people’s sexual orientation. These actions caused proponents of same-sex marriage to speak out against Chick-fil-A, and at some universities, students are even trying to remove the restaurant from their campus.
In response to Cathy’s stance against same-sex marriage, Carly McGehee from New York planned to have a nationwide same-sex kiss-in on Friday, August 3, encouraging gays and lesbians to protest in front of the 1,600 Chick-fil-A restaurants across the nation.
McGehee’s call to action in turn caused Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, to plan a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to be held on Wednesday, August 1.
On Wednesday, Chick-fil-A restaurants were packed with customers who supported Cathy’s views on the traditional family unit, and lines poured out of the restaurant and into the streets; it was a record-setting sales day for the restaurant chain. On Friday, a number of gay couples showed up at many of the Chick-fil-A restaurants and protested outside, sharing photos and videos of their protest online.
