Cluck off: The battle over Chick-Fil-A

I watched with bemusement at the people lined up around the block in the U.S. to show their solidarity with Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday. They were exercising their right to clog their arteries and flip off the librul mayors and anti-Christian queers and sodomites. Jesus is Lord with a Lipitor chaser.

I’ve already made it quite clear that folks who boycott a restaurant because they don’t like the company’s business model are free to do so, and that mayors of cities who object to the company and their beliefs are going over the line when they say they don’t want them in their town. (I have a number of progressive friends who disagree with me on that point. Fine. That’s what healthy debate is all about.)

What I find supremely ironic is that the same people who are yammering about the First Amendment and freedom of religion have absolutely no problem whatsoever trampling on the First Amendment rights of my religious denomination — the Quakers — to celebrate same-sex marriage. And we’re not alone in holding that all couples, regardless of body parts, have the right to live their lives as they see fit in the way they believe was intended for them by whatever god or higher authority — or none whatsoever. But apparently we need to open a fast-food chain in order to get our message of inclusiveness out there.

The Christians who think they have a monopoly on the morals of America and can dictate them to the rest of us through lung power, television, and high-paid smooth-talking lobbyists are the ones with the problem with the First Amendment, not us. It also should be pretty clear that they see this as some sort of political weapon, ginning up support for right-wing candidates and running with it as if their church is some sort of SuperPAC. That is more of an assault on the Constitution — not to mention a trivialization of faith and practice — than any pronouncement by a mayor of a city who momentarily forgets that being a true democrat means you have to put up with sniveling bigots who want to open a business that supports a group that backs homosexual genocide in Uganda.