GLBT rights remain prominent in both politics and
culture. A few weeks ago, I discussed the appropriateness of supporting political
positions as a company in “You Can’t Boycott the Gay Away” and it seems that the reverse applies as well; you can’t support a company to
make the gay go away. Chick-fil-a was already in the news a few years ago when
it was revealed they give millions of dollars to anti gay companies like the
Family Research Council. But this year, their president, Dan Cathy, brought the
company into the spotlight again when he stated that his company was founded on
“Biblical principles” and supported the “traditional family”. This brought a
great deal of hostility towards and protests across the country at Chick-fil-A,
ranging from mayors saying they won’t allow new CFA restaurants in their cities
to people planning gay kiss-ins at the establishments. But Mike Huckabee,
former presidential candidate in the 2008 race, supported a counter protest in
the form of a “buycott” where people would eat at CFA to support their
opposition to gay marriage. This doesn’t really seem to have worked, since the
company is losing popularity overall in their brand recognition in the last
month or so. And even if CFA manages to keep its profits at an even keel, I
imagine they will lose a great deal of patrons and likely close a few locations
where profits aren’t maintained, keeping their main locations in places where
it maintains popularity with a conservative demographic, such as where it
started in the Southeast. But is it really appropriate to always protest or
boycott a group merely because they don’t agree with your politics? Can you
distinguish between the policies a company supports and the product they sell
you or are they too overlapped when it comes to where the money used to pay for
it goes to? And should corporations really be involved in politics or should
they focus on making profit in their ventures?
First off, this shouldn’t be argued to be about
first amendment rights. Like the Oreo thing, it is within a company’s rights to
say they support a certain political position. The limits of the first
amendment are primarily to hate speech, which hasn’t been uttered as far as I’m
aware by Dan Cathy. Even his ridiculous claim that we’re “inviting God’s
judgment” by trying to achieve marriage equality is not illegal, since it’s a
claim that has no real basis in fact like Westboro Baptist Church’s similar
warnings. Terrible things happen to America as much as they happen to other
nations, so God’s judgment is all over the place by that sketchy logic. CFA has
every right to take a stand on this issue, but at the same time, there is such
a thing as too much involvement. Companies can become too invested and
literally start to campaign through their funds by donating to political
organizations. This fundamentally undermines the initial purpose of a
democratic government. When companies get involved, they take away the real
value of the individual votes, because they’re campaigning with much more money
behind them and it’s voluntary for different reasons. Asking for funds is one
thing common in election season, but restaurants or the like get consistent
cash flow, which makes their situation more ideal to take advantage of the lack
of limits in other political contexts.
The Supreme court has made it law, from what I understand, that
corporations cannot donate more than a certain amount to presidential or other
such candidate based campaigns, but say nothing concerning such things as
legislation in general. The Family Research Council, one of CFA’s recipients of
funds, was against Congress condemning a bill in Uganda that would have made it
legal to kill homosexuals, though they tried to divert the blame from them
directly by saying they were trying to avoid “normalization of homosexuality
across the world”. That same organization has been deemed a hate group by the
Southern Poverty Law Center. These facts alone should be enough to make you
think about calling CFA out on that blemish of their otherwise spotless record.
What is ultimately at stake here is not whether CFA is going to go out of
business, since a free market of both business and ideas necessitates that we
have both crappy or subpar food and beliefs. If someone thinks that gays
shouldn’t get the same rights as straight people, that’s their prerogative. But
when you start trying to legislate those beliefs in reality, that’s where you
stop being free under the constitution to do so. The same applies to companies.
The goal should not be to protest, boycott or support CFA because of their
political stance on gay marriage, but petition them to stop funding hate groups
and stay out of politics as much as possible, if not entirely.
Chick-fil-A has stated that they intend to leave the
policies of same sex marriage to the government and political arena. If this is
the case, then I hope that they also cease their funding to people who are
involved in politics. The National Organization for Marriage advocated a
boycott of General Mills and Starbucks; plus I believe Million Moms suggested
the same for Oreo. The vast majority of companies either 1) aren’t involved or
2) try to do it covertly, as CFA seems to have done in the past and may
continue to in the future. Any company should maintain neutrality in this
issue, especially when it comes to funding. They can take a position in the
nominal sense, but to actively try to advance it through their profits is
potentially unconstitutional, if not just insensible. Why waste funds trying to
do what the people should be allowed to do without interference from entities
that are not individual persons? It’s one thing for explicitly political groups
to get donations from individual citizens, but private companies should
concentrate on maximizing profit and marketing the items or services in question
they provide. It’s just practical common sense.
To separate politics and product completely in terms
of being a consumer misses the point, but as a producer, it is essential to
doing good and efficient business. Policies and legislation are unnecessary to selling
chicken sandwiches, or any other product, food related or otherwise. Just
market the items through various media and progress from there. So this is a
double edged conclusion. On the one hand, a consumer shouldn’t try to separate
product and politics, since they can be interrelated. CFA can be argued to
sponsor discrimination, so you shouldn’t go there. But you also should be able
to separate the company’s employees from the policies their higher ups, like
Dan Cathy support. They may not support that, but they still work there
regardless. And for producers, the goal of entrepreneurial enterprises and
franchises is to make money, not to use that money for purposes other than
making money. Charitable organizations may be an exception, but to advance a partisan
agenda is not what you should do with the money you get from people of all
political persuasions. Keep your money either to charity or consumer interests
and I think everything would become a little better in terms of political
campaigns and their natural flow. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.
No comments:
Post a Comment