Threats to Chick-fil-A 'height of stupidity' -- WND

[bsteadman]

Threats to Chick-fil-A 'height of stupidity'

Legal team warns city officials who promise trouble for restaurants

WND
7/26/2012

Excerpt:

"A legal team that specializes in religious and civil rights and the Constitution says city officials who are promising to punish Chick-fil-A restaurants for the religious beliefs followed by their chief are asking for trouble.

“These government officials ought to be ashamed. For a public official to threaten denial of a right to do business because the president of a private company supports natural marriage is the height of stupidity and intolerance,” said Mathew Staver, chief of Liberty Counsel.

“Unfortunately, their response is typical of intolerant homosexual activists. They will go to any lengths to silence the majority of Americans who believe that children do best when raised in a natural family with one mom and one dad,” he said.

The issue has turned into a firestorm over the last couple of days. Among the results? The Henson Co., creator of the Muppets characters, said it no longer would work with Chick-fil-A. The mayor of Boston publicly bashed the restaurant chain. Chicago officials said they would not want the company to operate in their wards. And “kiss-in” protests were announced in front of company outlets on college campuses.

All brought on by advocates for homosexual behavior because Dan Cathy, whose father, Truett Cathy, founded the $4 billion-plus a year business, gave an interview to the Baptist Press.

“We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that,” Cathy said.

In a separate radio interview, Dan Cathy said, “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. I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think we can try to define what marriage is all about.”

Earlier today, Billy Graham, the longtime dean of Christian leaders in the United States, expressed his support for the Cathy family

“I want to express my support for my good friends Truett Cathy and his son Dan Cathy, and for their strong stand for the Christian faith,” he said in a statement released by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

“I’ve known their family for many years and have watched them grow Chick-fil-A into one of the best businesses in America while never compromising their values. Chick-fil-A serves each of its customers with excellence, and treats everyone like a neighbor. It’s easy to see why Chick-fil-A has become so popular across America,” he said.

Liberty Counsel noted the city officials who are on thin ice include Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno, who “said that he will deny Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in Chicago’s Logan Square. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told the Boston Herald that he would block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in the ‘Cradle of Liberty.” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel followed suit.”

“There is absolutely no evidence that Chick-fil-A has discriminated against anyone,” Staver continued. “The intolerance displayed by these government officials ought to serve as a wakeup call to the majority of Americans who support the commonsense understanding of natural marriage.

“If given the chance, these intolerant officials would silence anyone who supports natural marriage. They have placed extreme ideology over freedom,” Staver said."
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[bsteadman]

Classic liberals discover homo-fascism

Exclusive: Scott Lively has a message for the few lefties defending Chick-fil-A

WND
Scott Lively
7/27/2012

Excerpt:

"The brouhaha over Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s defense of authentic marriage has caused a fender-bender on the political left. Classic free-speech liberalism has apparently met for the first time the new generation of homo-fascists. Heady with empowerment by President Obama and a long string of political and legal victories, the “gay” activist movement and its homosexualist allies are flexing their muscles like never before. Two such allies, Mayors Tom Merino of Boston and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, announced plans to use the powers of their respective offices to prevent Chick-fil-A from expanding its business in these two cities. Their blatant disregard for the First Amendment was so egregious that it apparently shocked a number of classic liberals into action.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald chided his fellow travelers on the left in a column titled “Rahm Emanuel’s Dangerous Free Speech Attack,” remarking “You can’t cheer when political officials punish the expression of views you dislike and then expect to be taken seriously when you wrap yourself in the banner of free speech in order to protest state punishment of views you like and share.” He listed a number of other liberal journalists and groups like the ACLU who had also gone public with their criticism.

Welcome to the brave new world of homo-fascism, Mr. Greenwald, but watch your back. You’re now officially a “homophobe” because you have dared to oppose something that is favorable to the “gay” cause. Sure, you tried to cover your backside by tossing in a couple of cheap shots at the “chicken CEO” but that won’t save you from the brownshirts. They don’t really care about free speech. They care about power. Indeed, if you had been paying attention over the past few years, you would have noticed that their official position is that “anti-gay bigots” don’t deserve free speech at all.

Perhaps you are unaware of the “Commentator Accountability Project” of the powerful Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD). It was launched earlier this year to hold media outlets (not commentators) accountable for allowing traditional marriage advocates (including this writer) to have a voice in the public debate.

One of its key concepts for twisting the arms of journalists is the slogan “bias is not balance.” How’s that for simply redefining pro-family opinion out of existence in the newsroom? I personally recall a leader of the Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association years ago state that allowing pro-family people to comment in news stories related to homosexuality was equivalent to letting the Ku Klux Klan have equal time in stories about race.

But surely, Mr. Greenwald, you are not unaware of the many incidents of “gay” bullying of Christians in recent years, from the celebrity-level character assassination of beauty queen Carrie Prejean (for saying nothing more than that marriage should be between a man and a woman), to the recent bashing of Brad Pitt’s mom for giving her opinion that homosexuality is wrong in a letter to her local newspaper. Reportedly, death threats have since intimidated her into silence. Last year, just outside of Rahm’s Chicago in Arlington Heights, a church school that hosted me for a talk on the biblical view of homosexuality was vandalized when a chunk of pavement was thrown through a window. On it was written the message “Shut Down Lively” and a note was attached threatening future violence. Come to mention it, though, you wouldn’t have known about this hate crime because it got almost no press coverage, even locally. I wonder why?

True, these examples are not precisely equivalent to the case of public officials abusing their offices to punish pro-family speech, but they do share in common an implicit belief that all disapproval of homosexuality must be suppressed. And that the urgency of this goal trumps all other considerations."
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[bsteadman]

Boston Globe and Chicago Sun-Times Take Chick-Fil-A Bashing Mayors to Woodshed

Breitbart/Big-Journalism
Michael Patrick Leahy
7/28/2012

Excerpt:

"Attacks by Democratic Mayors Thomas Menino of Boston and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago on Chick-fil-A have backfired in their own hometowns. In both cities, as Newsbusters reports, the leading paper has taken its mayor to the free speech woodshed. In Boston, the very liberal Boston Globe has skewered Menino's attacks in an editiorial, and in Chicago, the Chicago Sun-Times was equally critical of Emanuel.

After Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy told a Christian publication on July 16 that he was personally opposed to gay marriage, Boston Mayor Menino fired the first anti-free speech salvo four days later when he told the Boston Herald :

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday.

“That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here. And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

Egged on by a politically correct Chicago Alderman, Mayor Emanuel added to Menino's line of attack:

Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values.

What the CEO has said as it relates to gay marriage and gay couples is not what I believe, but more importantly, it’s not what the people of Chicago believe. We just passed legislation as it relates to civil union and my goal and my hope … is that we now move on recognizing gay marriage. I do not believe that the CEO’s comments … reflects who we are as a city.

Both the Globe and Sun-Times have had enough of this mayoral anti-free speech hypocrisy.

In an editorial this past week, the Globe took the Mayor on directly:

[W]hich part of the First Amendment does Menino not understand? A business owner’s political or religious beliefs should not be a test for the worthiness of his or her application for a business license.

Chick-fil-A must follow all state and city laws. If the restaurant chain denied service to gay patrons or refused to hire gay employees, Menino’s outrage would be fitting. And the company should be held to its statement that it strives to “treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation, or gender.” But beyond the fact that Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays, the religious beliefs of the company’s top executive don’t appear to control its operations...

Ironically, Menino is citing the specific location along the Freedom Trail as a reason to block Chick-fil-A. A city in which business owners must pass a political litmus test is the antithesis of what the Freedom Trail represents. History will render judgment on the views of Chick-fil-A executives. City Hall doesn’t have to.

The Chicago Sun-Times pulled no punches either:

Alderman Joe Moreno wants to stop a fast-food chain, Chick-fil-A, from opening a restaurant in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood because he doesn’t like the company president’s opposition to gay marriage.

Moreno — and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who’s thinking along the same lines — should back off. Government has no business withholding zoning permits and licenses just because it objects to a businessman’s religious or political views.

Moreno has accused the company’s president, Dan Cathy, of making “bigoted, homophobic comments.” In a recent media interview, Cathy warned that “we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation” when we fail to support the “biblical definition of marriage.” Cathy also has given money to groups working against legalized gay marriage.

Chicago is a proudly gay-friendly town, and Moreno no doubt speaks for many Chicaogans when he says he’s offended by Cathy’s views. But where in the First Amendment does it say that Cathy is free to speak his mind only as long as Moreno agrees with him?

If and when Chick-fil-A discriminates against a gay customer or employee, that violation of the law — and not Cathy’s personal views — would be grounds for the city coming down hard.

But it’s an entirely different matter for government to put on the squeeze

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In perhaps the most surprising turn of events, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, known for his recent nanny-state attempts to ban the sale of soda in his city, came to the defense of Chick-fil-A:

"I disagree with them really strongly on this one,'' Bloomberg said Friday of Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and San Francisco mayor Edwin M. Lee, who have criticized Chick-fil-A."
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