First Amendment Chicken Sandwiches

By all accounts, S. Truett Cathy has been a very successful businessman and entrepreneur.  Years ago he decided to offer an alternative to the usual fast food business by serving chicken exclusively instead of the omni-present beef hamburger.  And so Chick-Fil-A was born in Atlanta in 1967.

Cathy’s restaurants are notable for (as fast food goes) excellent quality from good ingredients; unfailingly cheerful, prompt, and eager-to-please staff; good, adult onsite local management; orders brought to the table along with a strolling staff member continually offering free drink refills; and buildings kept impeccably clean.  It is an experience replicated in virtually every outlet I have visited.  It is exactly the first-class operation (within its fast-food niche) that American ingenuity can deliver and the American people should support so as to encourage good corporate conduct and customer service.

In addition to his business skills, Mr. Cathy is also a very fundamentally religious man.  His expectations of employee conduct are reputed to be very high; he generously rewards in return; and he closes all of his restaurants on Sunday to allow his people a day of rest away from work and the opportunity to share in their own observance of the Sabbath.  Sunday closing is almost unheard of any more, particularly in the restaurant business.  In some ways it is nice to see a return to that quiet time 50 years ago when people did not need to shop seven days/week and twenty-four hours/day.  A time when people could stop the endless pursuit of profit and labor for at least one day of recuperation, recreation and reflection.  Perhaps surprisingly, that one day of closing does not seem to have affected Chick-Fil-A’s financial statements in any serious way.

S. Truett Cathy remains as Chairman and CEO of Chick-Fil-A, while daily operation of the corporation has now been passed to his son, Dan Cathy, as President and COO.  A few weeks ago in a television interview, Dan Cathy expressed his opposition to same-sex marriage.  He went on to say that “I think we are inviting God’s judgment as a nation when we shake our fist at Him and say ‘we know better than you what constitutes a marriage.’”  Why Dan Cathy chose to speak out in this controversial topic, having little or no special insight or contribution to add to the topic, is unclear.  But as to be expected in this age of instantaneous dissemination and responding commentary, his comments “went viral” all over the Internet and broadcast airwaves.  The gay/lesbian community and various liberal commentators denounced his comments, and many called for a boycott of Chick-Fil-A.  Fox commentator/former Governor Mike Huckabee off-handily proposed an eat-in day as a show of support to Chick-Fil-A, and hundreds of thousands subsequently lined up at some of the establishments.  Videos showed some Cathy protestors trying to inappropriately engage Chick-Fil-A staff into the debate and hold them guilty-by-association.  Yet it is safe to say that a smiling 17-year-old high schooler sitting in the drive-through window making $7/hour is hardly going to alter this political/social discourse or change Mr. Cathy’s thinking.

My support for same-sex marriage is likely well known by my readers.  (See an extensive discussion on the topic in my blog of 12/15/2008.)  I am in full disagreement with Mr. Cathy’s opinion and his basis for it.  I am also an advocate and practitioner of using my purchasing dollar to try to influence corporate conduct.  (I still avoid Exxon gas due to the Exxon-Valdez incident over two decades ago!)  So my immediate reaction was to instinctively join the boycotters and avoid any Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in my future.  But the more I continued to think about it, I have hesitated.

There are many people in this country who have opinions I disagree with, at times very strongly.  And certainly vice-versa.  But the bigger problem we have in America right now is not one of our disagreements, but our inability to work through these in a civil and productive way to the benefit of the many.  We simply argue, shout louder, move further and further apart, and seek to defeat each other at all costs any way we can.  Nobody gets anything instead of many getting something.  Social and economic progress does not move.

 I do not agree with Mr. Cathy’s views.  But in America our First Amendment protects each of us to hold and speak whatever views we have; we must respect that right in others if we are to have that right in turn for our own beliefs.  So I would be happy to sit quietly with Mr. Cathy and have a civil discussion of our disagreements to see what we might be able to learn from each other.  But it is when one moves from thoughts to actions that consequences are to be truly measured.  In that regard I think the Cathys run an excellent business in a manner I wish more businesses would follow.  To my knowledge, there has been no report of a gay or lesbian (either married or single) being refused employment or fired from a Chick-Fil-A establishment, or a customer being turned away, solely due to their sexual identity.  However abhorrent Dan Cathy’s views may be to me, it does not appear that those views have permeated into his corporation’s policies and practices.  And, to my somewhat surprise, that has come to make a significant distinction to me.

So I will continue to protest Mr. Cathy’s views whenever and however possible.  Nevertheless, I choose not to penalize his company and its many good employees as long as in their actions they remain independent of those views.  But let me be clear: the minute I may hear of a confirmed report of any such discrimination occurring in the business place, I will join such a boycott and return all of my dollars to the hamburger world without hesitation.

The older I get, and the more experiences that I have with tough ethical situations, the blacks-and-whites of my values and principles seem to become more clear.  But the clarity of the right course of action to take in consideration of all those involved becomes more gray, more nuanced.  Maybe, in one ideal world, that hesitation should not be.  But hopefully it simply reflects a greater willingness to pause in reflection, work through a more thoughtful reasoning, and make a small personal step towards achieving greater wisdom.  Our hardest decisions never come easily.