Chick-fil-A ‘Gay Marriage is Wrong but We’llShut Up' {Somebody Most be Hurting!}

March 20, 2014

Chick-fil-A ‘Gay Marriage is Wrong but We’llShut Up' {Somebody Most be Hurting!}

Chick-fil-A

In the summer of 2012, the billionaire family behind fast food chain Chick-fil-A found themselves…well, if not in hot water, then in a piping vat of chicken grease.

That year, with same-sex marriage on four state ballots, the scions of Forbes rich list stalwart S. Truett Cathy(net worth: $6.2 billion) hit headlines for taking a public stance against equal rights.

In July, Truett’s son Dan, Chick-fil-A’s CEO, told theBaptist Press he was “guilty as charged” in his support of what he described as traditional marriage.

“We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles,” Cathy said.

The fast food chain’s in-your-face Christian values weren’t exactly news even then. Forbes ran a story on The Cult of Chick-fil-A in 2007 and its stores close on Sunday to allow workers to attend church.

Rather, it was Dan Cathy’s reaffirmation of his firm’s same-sex marriage stance that set off a wave of protests, with LGBT kiss-ins at Chick-fil-A stores and even some lampooning via music video, with three drag queens skewering Chick-fil-A to the tune of Wilson Phillips’ ‘Hold On.’

(Sample lyrics: “Some day somebody’s gonna make you wanna gobble up a waffle fry / But no go, don’t you know, Chick-fil-A says you make the baby Jesus cry.”)

Almost two years later, Dan Cathy — a self-described evangelical Christian — says he made a mistake.

In a rare and wide-ranging interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cathy admitted his anti-equality stance probably wasn’t a wise business decision, regretting “making the company a symbol in the marriage debate”:

“Every leader goes through different phases of maturity, growth and development and it helps by (recognizing) the mistakes that you make,” Cathy said. “And you learn from those mistakes. If not, you’re just a fool. I’m thankful that I lived through it and I learned a lot from it.

Cathy agreed that the “lingering identity” of Chick-fil-A with “anti-gay groups” that jumped to its defense in 2012 has meant “alienating market segments”:

“Consumers want to do business with brands that they can interface with, that they can relate with,” Cathy said. “And it’s probably very wise from our standpoint to make sure that we present our brand in a compelling way that the consumer can relate to.”

Cathy himself hasn’t changed his own views on same-sex marriage. As he told the AJC:

“I think the time of truths and principles are captured and codified in God’s word and I’m just personally committed to that,” he said. “I know others feel very different from that and I respect their opinion and I hope that they would be respectful of mine.”

What is clear is that his family’s fried chicken business, which made $4.6 billion in sales in 2012, will be staying out of the fray when it comes to equality.

“I think that’s a political debate that’s going to rage on,” he told the Journal-Sentinel. “And the wiser thing for us to do is to stay focused on customer service.”

S. Truett Cathy, fried chicken billionaire.

On Friday, if all goes to plan, same-sex couples and their supporters will flood outlets of Chick-fil-A for a nationwide kiss-in. The LGBT community and their allies won’t be there for the love of waffle fries, but rather in protest of the fried chicken outlet’s increasingly public stance against gay marriage.

Friday’s kiss-in comes two days after Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, the brainchild of one-time presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. The chain reported record-setting sales on Wednesday as supporters swarmed drive-thrus in a show of support.

In recent weeks, Chick-fil-A has become an unexpected totem for the religious right and the object of derision (and some lampooning) from equality advocates.

The fast food chain’s in-your-face Christian values aren’t exactly news. Forbes ran a story on The Cult of Chick-fil-A in 2007 and its stores close on Sunday to allow workers to attend church. Rather, it was company president Dan Cathy’s reaffirmation of his firm’s same-sex marriage stance that set off this most recent wave of protest.

In an interview with the Baptist Press in July, Cathy said he was “guilty as charged” in his support of what he describes as traditional marriage.

“We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles,” Cathy said.

Cathy isn’t just the president and COO of Chick-fil-A, he’s an heir to a fried chicken fortune worth more than $1 billion. Dan and his brother Donald — who goes by the name Bubba — are the sons of company founder S. Truett Cathy, a devout Baptist raised in Depression-era Georgia. 91-year-old Truett went into the restaurant business in 1946, when he and his brother Ben opened an Atlanta diner they named The Dwarf Grill.

When Ben died three years later in a plane crash alongside another brother, Horace, Truett was left running the show. In 1967, he opened the first Chick-fil-A in the Greenbriar Mall, an Atlanta shopping center that still stands today. 45 years later, Truett remains CEO of a chain of more than 1,600 stores in 40 states. It’s the second largest fried chicken chain in the country — only KFC is bigger.

The company has gone from strength to strength in recent years, topping $1.1 billion in revenues for the first time in 2011, up from $976 million in 2010. Forbes pegged Truett Cathy as being worth $1.3 billion as of March’s World’s Billionaires list, although there’s no way of knowing exactly how that fortune is split among family members. We’re working on an updated net worth valuation for the Cathys ahead of this fall’s Forbes 400.

What is certain is that despite his official CEO title, Truett takes a backseat in the day-to-day running of Chick-fil-A. The 91-year-old makes only rare public appearances, most recently in May, when he accepted an honorary doctorate from Jerry Falwell’s evangelical Liberty University alongside Mitt Romney.

Cathy leaves son Dan to be the face of the operation, with Bubba overseeing Chick-fil-A’s other brands, the Dwarf House and Truett’s Grill restaurant chains. Truett’s only daughter Trudy isn’t involved with the firm itself, devoting her time to a Christian gap-year program called Impact 360 and working at camps run by the company’s controversial WinShape Foundation.

WinShape is the vehicle through which Chick-fil-A, and by extension the Cathys, have made about $5 million of donations to anti-gay marriage groups since 2003, with $1.9 million of that donated in 2010 to outfits including the Family Research Council and Marriage & Family Foundation. They’ve written checks to Exodus International, famous for “ex-gay” conversion therapy, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, whose website includes a testimonial from a coach “delivered” from homosexuality.

Chick-fil-A’s employees have also benefited from the Cathy family’s largesse, attending camps and retreats paid for by WinShape, as detailed in Forbes’ 2007 magazine story:

Loyalty to the company isn’t the only thing that matters to Cathy, who wants married workers, believing they are more industrious and productive. One in three company operators have attended Christian-based relationship-building retreats through WinShape at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga. The programs include classes on conflict resolution and communication. Family members of prospective operators–children, even–are frequently interviewed so Cathy and his family can learn more about job candidates and their relationships at home. “If a man can’t manage his own life, he can’t manage a business,” says Cathy, who says he would probably fire an employee or terminate an operator who “has been sinful or done something harmful to their family members.”

There are no federal laws prohibiting Chick-fil-A operators from asking questions about religious or marital status in an interview. In 2007, Chick-fil-A’s then-general counsel Bureon Ledbetter told Forbes: “We want operators who support the values here.”

In the years since, Dan Cathy has insisted the chain has no anti-gay agenda, nor any policies that discriminate against either job applicants or diners. “We have no agenda against anyone,” he said in a statement following the controversial donation of free meals to an event supporting traditional marriage in 2011. “While my family and I believe in the Biblical definition of marriage, we love and respect anyone who disagrees.”