On Chick-Fil-A

I intend to join the boycott of Chick-Fil-A, because of the recent comments by Dan Cathy, the company's CEO, opposing gay marriage.  I will never eat Chick-Fil-A.

This won't be hard for me.  I haven't ever eaten Chick-Fil-A up to now, not ever.  I don't even know what they serve.  I gather it's some kind of chicken sandwich.  If I was going out to lunch with friends, and asked where they wanted to go, and they said "I feel like Chick-Fil-A!" I would be at a complete loss.  I don't even know where any local Chick-Fil-A restaurants are located.  I could ask Siri, I suppose, if I had a Smartphone, except I don't, I just have my old dumb phone.  My friends would have to ask Siri on their Smartphones.

I sort of want to try Chick-Fil-A, and I want their sandwiches to be awesome. I really like chicken sandwiches, and I would love it if they made the best ones anywhere.  I want them to be the Five Guys of chicken sandwiches.  Then my boycott would mean something, would require that I actually give up something important to me.  As it is now, my boycott doesn't mean a thing.  It's pretty stupid, really.  I am giving up something I've never even tried, and that I wouldn't know where to go for if I wanted some. 

Yay for me.  

So, ironically, deciding to boycott Chick-Fil-A makes me want to eat their product, something I have never had any interest in up to now. 

I do know that there is a Chick-Fil-A somewhere in Provo, because they have a billboard ad on I-15.  I've seen it driving down from Salt Lake.  It has a cow, and she's written "eat mor chikin" on the billboard.  I think the humor for the ad is supposed to come from two incongruities--one, that a cow, in a nasty display of intra-species competitiveness, urges us to eat chicken sandwiches instead of hamburgers, and second, that the cow spells poorly.  But considering that it's a cow, I think she's doing really well.  I'm impressed with a cow with sufficient self-awareness and instinct for self-preservation to know that people eat hamburgers, that hamburgers are made from ground-up cows, that they could eat chicken instead, that doing so would be good for cows, (or cowz, yo) and that it's possible to convey that thought in written form, in English.  Plus, how did she manage to write?  Cows have hooves, not fingers; how did she manipulate a paint brush.  I think it's weird that Chick-Fil-A would build an ad campaign around how badly those dumb cows spell, when what's really remarkable is a cow that can spell at all. 

The whole thing makes me think that it's not the cow that's dumb, but Dan Cathy, CEO of the company.  I have no idea if he can spell.  His official statement opposing gay marriage was very well spelled.  It just seems to me idiotic.  First of all, I'm suspicious of anyone who talks about 'biblical marriage,' what with the widows being forced to marry their brothers-in-law and the rape victims having to marry their rapists and all.  I'll grant you that Mr. Cathy probably didn't mean by 'biblical marriage' the requirement that prospective sons-in-law deliver large numbers of Philistine foreskins to their girlfriends' Dads to prove their bona fides.  I think he understands 'biblical marriage' to mean a guy marrying a woman and then never cheating on her.  I'm actually in favor of that too.  I just don't see how it has anything to do with my gay friends who have also gotten married and who also don't intend to cheat. 

No, I think Dan Cathy is an idiot for this reason; he runs a company that sells chicken sandwiches. What does talking publically about gay marriage have to do with selling chicken sandwiches?  Why give people a reason to not buy your sandwiches?  What about gay people who like chicken sandwiches? 

I'm also doubt these kinds of boycotts do much good, or that they make a difference.  The only reason to do it is to feel better about yourself.  When the Supreme Court decides the issue, they won't even take Chick-Fil-A into account.  It will have no part in their deliberations.  In fact, I can imagine Justice Kennedy or Justice Roberts eating Chick-Fil-A while they work on their decision.  That's a pretty funny thought, actually.

Right now, Chick-Fil-A has come to mean 'against gay marriage.'  That makes me not to want to eat their food.  And so I never will again.  Not that I ever have.