Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Politically Incorrect Chicken: Critics of Chick-fil-A should Get-A-life

The Brown Shorts are marching again. Now they're coming after your chicken sandwich:
Chick-fil-A has long-been transparent about its Christian values. They close their stores on Sundays, a practice that has helped the chain garner the nickname "Jesus Chicken," and have even gone so far as to consider a potential employee's marital status and civic and church involvement in their hiring process. But while the company's beliefs come as no surprise, in sponsoring the Art of Marriage Conference, some say the restaurant empire took its evangelizing to a new level.

... The Chick-fil-A outcry, which has sparked boycotts and proposals from college students to remove the restaurant from campuses...
The critics of Chick-fil-A should Get-A-life. I'm trying to find where in the definition of "Tolerance" it requires you to try to shut down the businesses of people who disagree with you.

If gays want to avoid Chick-fil-A, more power to them. But their totalitarian mindset has got to be wearing on the public. If they're looking for an alternative, I suggest Taco Bell.

16 comments:

Singring said...

While Martin is moaning about students exercizing their constitutional right to express their opinion and deny their business to a chain of restaurants and resorts to his usual Nazi comparisons (it appears anyone who disagrees with Martin is a brownshirt or a Nazi), Lee is lecturing us on the blessings of a free market system in which we should punish corporations we don't agree with by witholding our business.

Only at Vital Remnants...

Tualha said...

Oh yes, definitely. The protestors should not have asked the federal government to shut down Chick-fil-A. They should not have firebombed Chick-fil-A stores. They certainly shouldn't have physicallly threatened Chick-fil-A employees.

Wait, what's that you say? They didn't do any of those things?

Then what exactly did they do that would fall under the definition of "totalitarian"?

They spoke out, and they called for boycotts. Wow. How totalitarian of them. Sieg heil.

KyCobb said...

If Chick-fil-A is using marital status and church attendance to determine if one is worthy to sell chicken sandwiches for it, its engaging in illegal discrimination.

Steve Billingsley said...

I am fine with people expressing their opinion. Call for boycotts all you want. Picket peacefully in front of restaurants, write op-eds, take your business elsewhere, have a ball.

But Chick-Fil-A is not engaging in discrimination of any kind in hiring practices or services offered. KyCobb, if you think that they are then offer some sort of proof.

What has these groups up in arms is that the corporation has made donations to groups that lobby against gay marriage, which is their right.

If you don't agree or don't like what Chick-Fil-A is doing, feel free to protest or boycott.

But I don't think the term "totalitarian" fits either. I think Chick-Fil-A has the right to donate to who they want to donate too and protesters have the right to protest those donations. But Chick-Fil-A doesn't have the right to discriminate (which it doesn't) and protesters don't have the right to damage property or interfere with Chick-Fil-A legally conducting it's business (which they didn't).

So why is everybody so bent out of shape?

Tualha said...

Steve B., you may not be aware of the Aziz Latif case. Aziz Latif, a Muslim, ran a Chick-fil-A franchise and consistently received excellent performance evaluations. Then he attended a training session that included a Christian prayer. He declined to participate in said prayer. Chick-fil-A fired him a day later. He sued, and Chick-fil-A settled.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3190/is_44_36/ai_94131554/

Tualha said...

Psh. Another missing comment. Steve B, google Aziz Latif. CFA fired him one day after he declined to participate in a Christian prayer at a training meeting.

Steve Billingsley said...

I read two articles regarding Mr. Latif. It says that the suit was settled, but does not disclose terms.

If the facts are actually what Mr. Latif alleges that is certainly troubling. But the settlement of the suit doesn't establish whether that happened or not.

If Chick-Fil-A is engaging in discriminatory employment practices, then it should pay the price. The article in Forbes that references this says that since 1988 (the article was written in 2007) Chick-Fil-A has been sued at least 12 times on charges of employment discrimination. It does not comment on what the outcome of any of these suits were other than the case involving Mr. Latif.

I don't know if for a company the size of Chick-Fil-A if this is a high number or not. The company that I work for is a privately held company with less than 1,000 employees and has been sued 3 times in the past 4 years for reasons of employment discrimination. I know significant details of one of these cases and the plaintiff asserted age discrimination. The truth in his case is that he was just crappy at his job. The company settled just to not go through the long hassle of the suit.

I hope Chick-Fil-A does not practice employment discrimination for the simple reason that I like their food and their customer service at the locations I have patronized is fantastic. But if they do, then the fact that the leadership of the company are professing Christians would not be proof that the two go hand in hand. Another well known fast food chain, In-n-Out Burger is also owned by professing Christians and has not had any claims of employment discrimination that I could find.

Tualha said...

Sure, obviously you can have some Christian businesses that discriminate against non-Christians and others that don't. All depends on the people running them at any particular time. While we don't know exactly what happened in the Latif case, the timing is certainly very suggestive, as is the apparent lack of any other reason for firing him.

Lee said...

> Then what exactly did they do that would fall under the definition of "totalitarian"?

For starters?

> If Chick-fil-A is using marital status and church attendance to determine if one is worthy to sell chicken sandwiches for it, its engaging in illegal discrimination.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

Do I understand you to say that you feel oppressed because your employer can't fire you for not attending the church of its choice?

Lee said...

> Do I understand you to say that you feel oppressed because your employer can't fire you for not attending the church of its choice?

Is that what Chic-Fil-A is doing?

KyCobb said...

Lee,

I didn't say they do. Martin said Chick-fil-A has considered church involvement in the hiring process. I'm commenting now on what you wrote. Did I understand you correctly? I would think that if you have a point to make you would want it to be understood.

Lee said...

Fine, I'll spell it out. I'm old-fashioned. I think an employer ought to be able to hire for any reason and fire for any reason. Just like an employee ought to be able to work for any reason and quit for any reason. Two can, and should, play at that game.

If a Mormon company wants to not hire me because I'm a Presbyterian, I don't have a philosophical problem with that. I might have a personal problem with it, or a practical problem with it, but not a philosophical one.

Public employers ought to play by different rules, natch.

So if Chic-fil-a did what Tualha said they did, I understand they almost certainly broke a law. I also think laws should be obeyed, even laws I don't like. That's another philosophical position.

Hiring is like sex. It should be engaged in by consenting adults. That's part of freedom. We have less freedom because such laws are in effect. And it's a disincentive to hiring, because potential litigation has to be considered a financial liability.

On a slightly different note: I have had many jobs, and at most of them, I and my co-workers have been put under considerable pressure to donate money to United Way. I will not do so because they give money to Planned Parenthood and certain other organizations I don't like. There is definitely a stigma attached to those who don't contribute. In the military, there was even an implied threat.

Often, I have been asked, why? At times, I have been told that I have to return the solicitation envelope anyway, with it marked with $0. When I asked why, I was told, "United Way wants to make sure everyone was contacted." When I followed up by asking, "Why is it any of United Way's business whether I was contacted?" I got no answer, just miffed expressions.

Is that the kind of pressure you're talking about? See, you don't need religious people around to pull that kind of crap. But somehow, I guess it's worse when religious people do it. Why? Well it must be worse, because their victims can sue and get settlements. All I get is the uneasy feeling that the next time there's a layoff, I might be on the menu.

KyCobb said...

Lee,

You would want to consult an attorney, but if you clearly express to your employer that you won't donate to the United Way as a matter of religious conviction, and you are subsequently laid off or fired, you may have a cause of action. Believe it or not, anti-discrimination laws protect believers and non-believers both.

You may feel less free because bigoted business owners can't discriminate, but there are millions of african-americans who are much more free because public accomodations, educational institutions and employment opportunities are no longer closed to them. As a white child of privilege, its easy for a Rand Paul to take a stand in favor of bigotry. I just wonder if he would have felt more free if he had been black in the 1950s and his child died because the only hospital in town was for whites only.

Singring said...

'I'm old-fashioned. I think an employer ought to be able to hire for any reason and fire for any reason. Just like an employee ought to be able to work for any reason and quit for any reason. '

Fair enough.

But then why do you say the following?

'll I get is the uneasy feeling that the next time there's a layoff, I might be on the menu.'

Wouldn't it be your employers right to lay you off for whatever reason he sees fit and at any given time, according to you?

So what is there to feel uneasy about? That's just the way the system works, right?

Lee said...

> You would want to consult an attorney...

Hasn't been necessary, but doubt it would go anywhere even if it came to that and I had a mind for stirring things up. Discrimination we have in great abundance, but it's illegal only under certain circumstances.

It is the popular conceit that black people made no economic progress before liberals swooped down and rescued them. Thomas Sowell has pointed out to the contrary that they made more progress as a group before Affirmative Action started in 1971 than since.

And Peter Drucker pointed out, in his tome on Management, that corporations operating in the deep South before 1964 had a problem in that there were many blacks that they wanted to promote, but were afraid of doing so for fear of stirring up violent local resentments. Liberals accuse business of only caring about the bottom line, and then they accuse business of being too bigoted to hire and promote minorities. Which one is it? It costs a company money to not to promote qualified people. This makes it unlikely that businesses would lead the charge to not promote qualified minorities.

When the Jim Crow laws went into effect, they were fought bitterly by...? The politicians? Wrong: by the transit companies. They saw no profit to be had in alienating their black customers by sending them to the back of the bus, and had to be forced into it by...? The politicians.

But today we trust politicians to monitor our bloodstreams, tell us what to eat, tell us who to hire, and all other good and wonderful things. And if they take too much power? Why, all we have to do is ask for it back.