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  • 2012-03-08 (xsd:date)
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  • Chick-fil-A and Same-Sex Marriage (en)
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  • Chick-fil-A is a Georgia-based fast food restaurant chain specializing in chicken entrées that opened its first outlet in suburban Atlanta in 1967 and has since grown to encompass over 1,600 restaurants in 39 states. The operations of the chain reflect the religious values of Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer S. Truett Cathy, whose biography notes that he has built his life and business based on hard work, humility and biblical principles and that based on these principles, all of Chick-fil-A's restaurants operate with a 'Closed-on-Sunday' policy, without exception. Chick-fil-A has been the subject of political controversy due to its WinShape Foundation, a charitable endeavor founded by S. Truett Cathy and his wife, Jeanette, which critics contend has evidenced a bias in the Chick-fil-A company by donating millions of dollars to groups with anti-gay agendas: As a result, Chick-fil-A has recently faced opposition from students at ten U.S. universities, including New York University (NYU), who have circulated petitions to oppose the opening of new Chick-fil-A franchises on their campuses and lobbied for the removal of existing restaurants. The company has maintained that neither they nor the organizations they donate to through WinShape has an anti-gay agenda: Chick-fil-A president and chief operating officer Dan Cathy's July 2012 interview with the Baptist Press generated even more controversy over the issue, with critics maintaining he had virtually acknowledged the company supports an anti-gay marriage agenda: The public reaction to Cathy's remarks prompted Chick-fil-A to issue the following statement: This controversy prompted readers to ask us about a number of related ancillary issues detailed below: Some readers asked, Did Chick-fil-A really spend millions lobbying Congress not to condemn Uganda’s 'Kill the Gays' bill? We found no evidence that Chick-fil-A itself spent money (let alone millions) lobbying Congress to prevent that body from issuing a condemnation of a controversial Ugandan legislative bill which carried the death penalty for some homosexual acts. Some sources reported that the Family Research Council (FRC), one of the organizations to which Chick-fil-A donates through its WinShape corporate charity foundation, filed a report stating that it had spent $25,000 lobbying Congress against H.R. 1064, a resolution seeking to express the sense of the House of Representatives that Uganda's proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill threatens the protection of fundamental human rights. However, the FRC said that although they did perform lobbying activities regarding H.R. 1064, they did not support the Uganda bill or the death penalty for homosexuality, and their lobbying efforts were not aimed at killing the Congressional resolution but rather at changing its language to remove sweeping and inaccurate assertions that homosexual conduct is internationally recognized as a fundamental human right. In September 2012, the Civil Rights Agenda group reported that Chick-fil-A had pledged not to fund groups that oppose gay marriage: Shortly afterwards, Chick-fil-A issued an ambiguous statement about whether it had in fact made any such pledge: (en)
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