While most of corporate America wisely took the temperature of angry consumers and backed away from woke politics, one shocking holdout remains: Chick-fil-A.
The beloved fast-food franchise, who’s best known for its Christian ownership and family-centric policies, is quietly still condoning a message that is radically at odds with the biblical values that most people associate them with — including same-sex marriage.
To the shock of fans on Wednesday, a Utah franchise posted a gushing set of photos of two men in each other’s arms from their official account with the headline, “CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HAPPY COUPLE! Dougie & Toby recently got married and we are beyond happy for them! (ring emoji)”
While most of Chick-fil-A’s chains are run by local operators, the fact that any location felt comfortable posting such a controversial message is further proof that the company hasn’t weeded out the LGBT extremism that sparked so much backlash just a couple of years ago. It’s also an important reminder that until consumers have extracted tangible concessions from CEOs, as Robby Starbuck has done from dozens of retailers, there’s no guarantee that companies — regardless of what they profess publicly — will stay true to their word on cultural issues.
Unfortunately for conservatives, the duplicity from Chick-fil-A runs deep. As a lot of Americans remember, customers, and especially Christians, were horrified to learn that Truett Cathy’s chicken empire had not only stopped donating to the Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes in 2019 after pressure from the far-Left, but that they’d replaced their giving to these charities with organizations like the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — the same bullies who inspired a gunman to storm the headquarters of FRC with the intent to murder as many staffers as possible.
The PR nightmare got worse for the chain when news broke that the Chick-fil-A Foundation had funneled at least $230,000 to Covenant House, an organization that, among other things, hosts Drag Queen Story Hours. Conservatives were in disbelief — so much so that The Federalist felt the need to spell it out: “Yes, Chick-fil-A Really Is Funding a Group that Hosts Drag Queen Story Hours,” their headline read.
The moral compromise was such a betrayal that Mike Huckabee, who’d led 2012’s wildly successful Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to thank the Cathy family for their public stand on marriage, said one of the “biggest regrets of his life” was rallying behind the chain.
Amazingly, the company still employs a vice president of DEI, Erick McReynolds, who may be a genuinely good person, but there are practical consequences of making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of your corporate hierarchy. For starters, it provides cover to local operators who want to push the boundaries of the company’s ethics and embrace something as antithetical to a biblical worldview as same-sex marriage. And while Chick-fil-A stealthily tried to rename its DEI program to an innocuous-sounding “Better at Together” at the height of the nationwide pushback, the reality is that the dangerous ideology still has a seat at the executive table. (A seat, according to its website, that includes a commitment to protecting “gender identity” and “gender expression.”)
In the meantime, the millions of us who’ve cheered as the script flipped on woke companies these last two years are left scratching our heads at Chick-fil-A’s tolerance of leftist activism, because A. It’s not profitable. B. It’s not what their consumer base expects or supports. C. If the likes of Ford, Walmart, Loews, Toyota, John Deere, Coors, and others can turn their backs on explosive social issues, how much easier should it be for a company like Chick-fil-A? D. The chain had already endured years of far-Left abuse, surviving movements to ban them from airports, rest stops, and college campuses — and thrived. Why willingly surrender in a war you’ve already won?
“They’ve bought into the lie,” Huckabee told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” when the company decided to hire a vice president for DEI in 2023. “I don’t know any other way to say it. I can’t be polite about it, because there’s no way to say, ‘Oh, they’re just trying to stay out of harm’s way.’ No, they have injected themselves into the diversity, equity, and inclusion model,” he shook his head. “They’ve hired someone to be their vice president of DEI. And when a company does that, what they basically are saying is — ‘We want to be able to sit at the cool kids’ table … We don’t want to be over there by ourselves anymore. We don’t want people to make fun of us or point their fingers at us.’”
More than anything, what should frustrate loyal customers is that — unlike the secular corporations that promoted this agenda for decades without apology — Chick-fil-A built a business model based almost entirely on faith. And frankly, that means they should be held to a higher standard. Yes, there are local operators with diverse objectives and opinions, but for the sake of the company’s broader character, those individual franchises should be held to a moral code that reflects Chick-fil-A’s stated beliefs. At the very least, the vice president of DEI should be reassigned to support the Cathys’ original mission, and the cancer of diversity, equity, and inclusion should be eradicated from headquarters.
Unlike Target or Anheuser-Busch, this company intentionally made religion a part of the chain’s identity. So, it’s a point of legitimate hurt and disappointment that this company keeps profiting from its Christian reputation, only to turn around and sell out those same values.
Americans expect that from Nike. They expect it from Starbucks. They believed Chick-fil-A was different — and they continue to be wrong.
Originally published at The Washington Stand.
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer for The Washington Stand. In her role, she drafts commentary on topics such as life, consumer activism, media and entertainment, sexuality, education, religious freedom, and other issues that affect the institutions of marriage and family. Over the past 20 years at FRC, her op-eds have been featured in publications ranging from the Washington Times to The Christian Post. Suzanne is a graduate of Taylor University in Upland, Ind., with majors in both English Writing and Political Science.
