That’s why the swift rebuke at Reading was so stinging. Nearly eight years later, Chick-fil-A is still struggling to shed the impression that it is unwelcoming to the LGBTQ community, a very public battle it has had to fight every time the company has tried to expand north of the Mason-Dixon or establish beachheads overseas. Chick-fil-A, it seemed, had lost the support of Kermit the Frog. The day after the company’s statement, the late Boston mayor Tom Menino wrote in a public letter that there was “no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail” and vowed to block Chick-fil-A’s efforts to colonize Beantown, while the Jim Henson Company, home to the Muppets franchise, announced that it was suspending its collaboration with the company on children’s meals. This hardly ended the affair, especially as Cathy’s comments effectively put a spotlight on the family’s philanthropic practices. The shelling was so intense-“Hate to think what they do to the gay chickens!” one critic tweeted-that shortly after Cathy’s interview, the company issued a statement reading in part: “Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.” God’s mercy might also have been requested for Chick-fil-A’s social media team, which quickly found itself on the receiving end of a bombardment of incensed tweets and furious Facebook comments. “I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.” “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’” Cathy told Ken Coleman, a nationally syndicated talk-show host. Setting aside his spreadsheets and executive summaries, Cathy shared his thoughts on gay marriage in a radio interview. Cathy, the company’s CEO and Truett’s son, decided to do them a favor. LGBTQ advocacy groups had been trying to draw attention to these disbursements when, in the summer of 2012, Dan T. Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A’s founder, had made a conspicuous habit of donating to groups committed to preventing the cultural acceptance of homosexuality and, more urgently, to halting the move toward legalizing same-sex marriage. At least as far back as 2010, the WinShape Foundation, a nonprofit established by S. Where Chick-fil-A’s profits are going has been a thorny subject for the privately held company for some time now.
It’s about the active engagement and where their profits are going.” “If it was just beliefs, we probably wouldn’t be here protesting. “It’s a business based on anti-LGBT beliefs,” Martin Cooper, the head of Reading Pride, told a local newspaper. For instance, in October 2019, barely a week after Chick-fil-A opened its first location in England, the owners of the Oracle shopping center in Reading announced that they would not extend the restaurant’s lease beyond a “six-month pilot period.” The abortive effort left the Georgia-based company with egg on its face, but it was a smashing success for gay allies. This final achievement has brought the company a fair amount of unwanted attention. Chick-fil-A is famous for savory waffle fries, splendid customer service, and financing homophobia. Businesses can be famous for many things at once.