The intolerance of those who preach tolerance

[sirs]

To modify Lord Acton, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, but aldermanic power corrupts all der more manically. Proco "Joe" Moreno is Alderman of the First Ward of Chicago, and last week, in a city with an Aurora-size body count every weekend, his priority was to take the municipal tire-iron to the owners of a chain of fast-food restaurants. "Because of this man's ignorance," said Alderman Moreno, "I will now be denying Chick-fil-A's permit to open a restaurant in the First Ward."

"This man's ignorance"? You mean, of the City of Chicago permit process? Zoning regulations? Health and safety ordinances?

No, Alderman Moreno means "this man's ignorance" of the approved position on same-sex marriage. "This man" is Dan Cathy, president of Chick-fil-A, and a few days earlier he had remarked that "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" – which last part suggests he is as antipathetic to no-fault divorce and other heterosexual assaults on matrimony as he is to more recent novelties such as gay marriage. But no matter. Alderman Moreno does not allege that Chick-fil-A discriminates in its hiring practices or in its customer service. Nor does he argue that business owners should not be entitled to hold opinions: The Muppets, for example, have reacted to Mr. Cathy's observations by announcing that they're severing all ties with Chick-fil-A. Did you know that the Muppet Corporation has a position on gay marriage? Well, they do. But Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef would be permitted to open a business in the First Ward of Chicago because their opinion on gay marriage happens to coincide with Alderman Moreno's. It's his ward, you just live in it. When it comes to lunch options, he's the chicken supremo, and don't you forget it.

The city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, agrees with the Alderman: Chick-fil-A does not represent "Chicago values" – which is true if by "Chicago values" you mean machine politics, AIDS-conspiracy-peddling pastors and industrial-scale black youth homicide rates. But, before he was mayor, Rahm Emanuel was President Obama's chief of staff. Until the president's recent "evolution," the Obama administration held the same position on gay marriage as Chick-fil-A. Would Alderman Moreno have denied Barack Obama the right to open a chicken restaurant in the First Ward? Did Rahm Emanuel quit the Obama administration on principle? Don't be ridiculous. Mayor Emanuel is a former ballet dancer, and when it's politically necessary he can twirl on a dime.

Meanwhile, fellow mayor Tom Menino announced that Chick-fil-A would not be opening in his burg anytime soon. "If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult," said His Honor. If you've just wandered in in the middle of the column, this guy Menino isn't the mayor of Soviet Novosibirsk or Kampong Cham under the Khmer Rouge, but of Boston, Mass. Nevertheless, he shares the commissars' view that in order to operate even a modest and politically inconsequential business it is necessary to demonstrate that one is in full ideological compliance with party orthodoxy. "There is no place for discrimination on Boston's Freedom Trail," Mayor Menino thundered in his letter to Mr. Cathy, "and no place for your company alongside it." No, sir. On Boston's Freedom Trail, you're free to march in ideological lockstep with the city authorities – or else. Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when Massachusetts was a beacon of liberty: the shot heard round the world, and all that. Now it fires Bureau of Compliance permit-rejection letters round the world.

Mayor Menino subsequently backed down and claimed the severed rooster's head left in Mr. Cathy's bed was all just a misunderstanding. Yet, when it comes to fighting homophobia on Boston's Freedom Trail, His Honor is highly selective. As the Boston Herald's Michael Graham pointed out, Menino is happy to hand out municipal licenses to groups whose most prominent figures call for gays to be put to death. The mayor couldn't have been more accommodating (including giving them $1.8 million of municipal land) of the new mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston, whose IRS returns listed as one of their seven trustees Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Like President Obama, Imam Qaradawi's position on gays is in a state of "evolution": He can't decide whether to burn them or toss 'em off a cliff. "Some say we should throw them from a high place," he told Al-Jazeera. "Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement ... . The important thing is to treat this act as a crime." Unlike the deplorable Mr. Cathy, Imam Qaradawi is admirably open-minded: There are so many ways to kill homosexuals, why restrict yourself to just one? In Mayor Menino's Boston, if you take the same view of marriage as President Obama did from 2009 to 2012, he'll run your homophobic ass out of town. But, if you want to toss those godless sodomites off the John Hancock Tower, he'll officiate at your ribbon-cutting ceremony.

This inconsistency is very telling. The forces of "tolerance" and "diversity" are ever more intolerant of anything less than total ideological homogeneity. Earlier this year, the Susan G. Komen Foundation – the group that gave us those pink "awareness raising" ribbons for breast cancer – decided to end its funding of Planned Parenthood on the grounds that, whatever its other charms, Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with curing breast cancer. Within hours, the Komen Foundation's Nancy Brinker had been jumped by her fellow liberals and was strapped to a chair under a light bulb in the basement with her head clamped between two mammogram plates until she recanted. A few weeks back, Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor who "says he's never voted for a Republican presidential candidate," published a paper in the journal Social Science Research whose findings, alas, did not conform to the party line on gay parenting. Immediately, the party of science set about ending his career, demanding that he be investigated for "scientific misconduct" and calling on mainstream TV and radio networks to ban him from their airwaves.

As an exercise in sheer political muscle, it's impressive. But, if you're a feminist or a gay or any of the other house pets in the Democratic menagerie, you might want to look at Rahm Emanuel's pirouette, and Menino's coziness with Islamic homophobia. These guys are about power, and right now your cause happens to coincide with their political advantage. But political winds shift. Once upon a time, Massachusetts burned witches. Now it grills chicken-sandwich homophobes. One day it'll be something else. Already in Europe, in previously gay-friendly cities like Amsterdam, demographically surging Muslim populations have muted Leftie politicians' commitment to gay rights, feminism and much else. It's easy to cheer on the thugs when they're thuggish in your name. What happens when Emanuel's political needs change?

Americans talk more about liberty than citizens of other Western nations, but, underneath the rhetorical swagger, liberty bleeds. When Mayor Menino and Alderman Moreno openly threaten to deny business licenses because of ideological apostasy, they're declaring their unfitness for public office. It's not about marriage, it's not about gays, it's about a basic understanding that a free society requires a decent respect for a wide range of opinion without penalty by the state. In Menino's Boston, the Freedom Trail is heavy on the Trail, way too light on the Freedom.

[Plane]

That is a good one.

[sirs]

Thanks, Plane.  Coming from you, that is high praise.  Perhaps not my original opinion, but one I fully concur with. 

[Plane]

Well I may be very conservative , but not in the sense that I want a strictly enforced orthodoxy.

The best strictly enforced orthodoxy that there ever could be would be a mistake , even if I were allowed to write the rules I would be against them.

In this I am against the basic idea and also against the narrowminded ....ness.

[Christians4LessGvt]

I ate at Chick-fil-A last week for the first time in awhile.

We buy lunch for our employees at least once a week,
they all love Chick-fil-A and
I will now make sure Chick-fil-A is in the regular rotation!

[sirs]

Ditto on the rotation     

[sirs]

In recent days, the extreme intolerance, bigotry, and exclusivity of some gay activists and their straight allies has been on prominent display in their attacks against Chick-fil-A. What makes this all the more ironic, not to mention Orwellian, is that their campaign is being carried out in the name of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity. As expressed by jurist Marvin Frankel (in his book Faith and Freedom: Religious Liberty in America), “The powerless call out for tolerance. Achieving power, they may soon forget.”

Today, words like “diversity” and “inclusion,” which have been on the lips of gay activists for years, have taken on an ominous tone that would make Orwell proud.

Since March, students at New York University have been circulating a petition calling for Chick-fil-A to be removed from their campus for “human rights violations” (I kid you not). In classic doublespeak, the petition states that the fast food company doesn’t belong there because “NYU prides itself on being a diverse, open and inclusive campus community. . . . Unfortunately, maintaining a contract with an anti-gay vendor like Chick-fil-A undermines what makes this university so great.” So, Chick-fil-A should be banned because NYU “prides itself on being a diverse, open and inclusive campus community.”

In the same vein, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, stated, “As the country moves toward inclusion, Chick-fil-A has staked out a decidedly stuck-in-the-past mentality.” He further stated, apparently with a straight face, that “fair-minded consumers” can now “make up their own minds whether they want to support an openly discriminatory company.” It appears, then, that Griffin’s version of an “inclusive” America means that it’s either the gay way or the highway.

But it gets worse. In the now infamous words of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, “Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population.”

It appears, however, that you can have a mayor in the city of Boston who discriminates against a population (namely, the scores of millions of Americans who do not want to redefine marriage) and against a business (namely Chick-fil-A, an exemplary company that has broken no laws, including laws of discrimination).

Mayor Menino continued (and with Orwellian eloquence at that), “We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” a stunning example of unintended irony if ever there was one.

In a similar example of unconscious doublespeak, New York City council speaker Christine Quinn, herself in a same-sex “marriage,” explained why she too wanted Chick-fil-A kicked off the NYU campus: “We are a city that believes our diversity is our greatest strength and we will fight anything and anyone that runs counter to that.”

That’s right, Chick-fil-A. We are so diverse that we will run you out of our city. And we are so open and inclusive that we have no room for a business like yours.

Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno also attributed his attack on Chick-fil-A to “diversity,” explaining to ABCNews.com that his district is “a very diverse ward--economically, racially, and diverse in sexual orientation” – but not so diverse that it can welcome a Christian-based company. (The comments of the magnanimous mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, require little commentary: “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values. They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents.” Perhaps he should have added, “No disrespect intended to my fellow neighbors and residents who oppose same-sex ‘marriage,’ and certainly, no disrespect intended to Minister Farrakhan, whose business is always welcome in our city.”)

Not to be left out in this remarkable display of tolerance, equality, and diversity, the Philadelphia City Council was considering “a resolution condemning Chick-fil-A for what one city leader called ‘anti-American’ attitudes that promote ‘hatred, bigotry and discrimination.’ City Councilman Jim Kenney sent a letter to Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy telling him to ‘take a hike and take your intolerance with you.’” (I am not making this up.)

Does Councilman Kenney not realize that he should be directing his statement to the face looking at him in the mirror? (To repeat: “take a hike and take your intolerance with you.”) Does the Philadelphia City Council not recognize that 31 states have so far voted to uphold marriage as the union of one man and woman? Are all these states, most recently North Carolina, with an overwhelming vote of 61-39%, “anti-American”? And isn’t it the Philadelphia City Council resolution that is actually an example of “hatred, bigotry and discrimination”? Yes, Chick-fil-A, we will discriminate against you because we oppose discrimination.

Already in 1994, Camille Paglia wrote in her book Vamps and Tramps, “One reason I so dislike recent gay activism is that my self-identification as a lesbian preceded Stonewall: I was the only openly gay person at the Yale Graduate School (1968-72), a candor that was professionally costly. That anyone with my aggressive and scandalous history could be called ‘homophobic,’ as has repeatedly been done, shows just how insanely Stalinist gay activism has become.” And Orwellian too.

So be on guard: The intolerance brigade is coming for you

[kimba1]

Makes me wonder is the chicken so good it would temp you away from temptation?

[sirs]

I wouldn't say that about the chicken.  But the limited-time only Banana Bread pudding shake??...WOW, that sure could   

[sirs]

Chick-fil-A president and COO Dan Cathy faces a consumer protest for expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage. Fair enough. Offended, the Democratic mayors of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco threatened to prevent the Georgia-based fast-food company from operating in their cities!

Whether for or against same-sex marriage, what part of the First Amendment do these radical mayors not understand? The First Amendment is about preventing government from infringing on political speech. This is a clear-cut case of suppression and punishment of Cathy’s right of free speech.

In an interview picked up by the Baptist Press, Cathy told the Biblical Recorder that he operates his business on Christian principles, including closing on Sundays. About gay marriage, he said: “I think we’re inviting God’s judgment when we shake our fist at him, you know, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’ And I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try and redefine what marriage is all about.”

Even worse for critics, Chick-fil-A donates millions to WinShape, which regularly contributes to conservative pro-traditional marriage groups like Focus on the Family.

Polls show Cathy’s view of same-sex marriage is held by at least half the country. And voters, when given a chance to vote on the issue, have consistently voted against same-sex marriage, including those in liberal states like Oregon and California. Voters in 31 states have approved measures defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

As recently as 90 days ago, Cathy and President Barack Obama shared the same view. During the 2008 presidential debate hosted by Pastor Rick Warren, Obama explained: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian – for me – for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix. … I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage.”

But today, Obama’s three-months-ago position makes one a homophobe.

About Cathy, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, said: “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.”

Not consistent with “Chicago values”?

Anti-Semitic Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan recently offered to help police high-crime areas of Chicago in the wake of an uptick in murders. Mayor Emanuel accepted Farrakhan’s assistance. Has the mayor heard Farrakhan’s views on gay marriage? After criticizing Obama as “the first president that sanctioned what the scriptures forbid,” Farrakhan condemned homosexuality as a “sin, according to the standard of God.” To politicians, he said, “If the book is no good, what the hell are you using it for to take an oath of office to uphold, not the Bible, but the Constitution?”

So, zero tolerance for a white critic of gay marriage, but not for a black critic?

One is almost tempted to accuse Mayor Emanuel of … racism! Even Chick-fil-A’s opponents admit they find no instance where the company denied service to a customer, refused to hire someone because of sexual orientation or fired someone for being gay.

Microsoft and Apple, to name a couple, donate to pro-gay-marriage groups. Should opponents of gay marriage find the companies’ stance on marriage so offensive that they, too, launch consumer boycotts?

Liberals sure expect tolerance from others, don’t they? Take the Olympics.

One of the co-hosts of the London Olympics is the smooth, relaxed veteran Bob Costas. But on his radio show in 2007, Costas went hard political. He said it was an “inescapable fact” that President George W. Bush had a “tragically failed administration”: “I think it is now overwhelmingly evident, if you’re honest about it, even if you’re a conservative Republican, if you’re honest about it, this is a failed administration. And no honest conservative would say that George W. Bush was among the 500 most qualified people to be president of the United States.” Nice.

Actor Morgan Freeman voices the Visa commercials running during the Olympics. But Freeman recently blasted the tea party as “racist”: “The tea partiers who are controlling the Republican Party … their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What underlines that? Screw the country. … We’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man out of here. It is a racist thing.” Sweet.

Yet those offended by Costas and Freeman are expected to show tolerance and open-mindedness, despite the attacks on Bush and the GOP-embraced tea party. The same expectation of tolerance for the views of others, however, does not extend to Chick-fil-A and the issue of gay marriage.

There is good news for the company. Cathy’s comments, when the dust settles, might actually help business. A SurveyUSA poll conducted for KABC in Los Angeles finds the numbers of people who intend to buy Chick-fil-A – as a result of the controversy – outnumber those who refuse to buy.

It seems that America’s tolerance for intolerance goes only so far.

[kimba1]

wondering if instead it was a purely verbal protest would chick-fil-a get as much business?

[sirs]

Who knows.  What is known is multiple heads of a government body have made public efforts to silence a person's 1st amendment rights, via Government blackmail, by way of denying zoning permits.  Apparently "Chicago's values" (and like minded mayors) don't include freedom or speech or freedom of religion

[Plane]

  Apparently "Chicago's values" (and like minded mayors) don't include freedom or speech or freedom of religion

That stings!

Bumper sticker materiel.

[sirs]

 

[Plane]

August 7 go buy a Starbucks coffee in support of the LGBTBLT community.
Apparently not an idea concieved by Starbucks , at this point they have not responded.


http://www.thedailymeal.com/starbucks-appreciation-day-planned-support-marriage-equality

(LGBTBLT Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual Bacon Lettuce Tomato)


Seems like a good idea, the result will be that Starbucks management will host a referendum on the popularity of the idea the Starbucks management will by the middle of the day on Aug 8th know how much their clientelle listen to the news.