Give Up My Waffle Fries? Are You Kidding Me? But...

Give up my waffle fries? Are You Kidding Me? Have you lost your mind? I love love love Chick-Fil-A. 
Those waffle fries are so freakin good, the potato addict that I am cannot live without them.

And I LOVE those chicken nuggets. Chick-Fil-A is some of the best fast food I've EVER had and let's not forget that Banana Pudding Milkshake, it will make you slap someone it's so good.

Up until a year ago there were no Chick-Fil-A's in my neck of the woods; I would only catch them while on the road speaking, mostly in the airport. Then, they opened in my neighborhood on Chicago's Gold Coast and I've made my way there often because Sophie loves those fries and nuggets too.

I didn't learn about the politics of the owner until about 6 months ago. I was standing in line and 3 openly gay guys walked up behind me. The one friend was telling the other 2 friends that he was not going to eat there. He said, "You can eat here and I'll watch." So I jumped in and asked why. He explained that the owner was super religious, anti-gay and has strict policies about who could buy a franchise. "You must be married," the guy spouted out. Hmmmm, I thought that was a bit extreme but I shrugged it off. NOTHING was gonna stop me on that day from getting my waffle fries and nuggets.

As they walked out, I turned back in line and waited my turn. I got my order and sat in the very busy Chick-Fil-A and savored each bite, the foodie that I am. Deciding to stay and eat that day was major for me because I'm the woman who boycotted grapes for years in support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. I boycotted Campbell Soup for years for the same reasons. You have to remember, before I became an AIDS Activist I spent my first 12 years in politics as a national political organizer; a history that I am very proud of. I don't cross picket lines under any circumstance. There could be a check on the other side of the door and they would have to bring it to me, or I just won't get it.

My politics is long and deep and I tend to be on the left side of left. In college I organized the Free South Africa Movement and led the boycott against my university because the foundation invested in South Africa. I remember I boycotted Whoppi Goldberg for years because she performed in white South African resorts at the height of Apartheid. "How dare she?" I thought! "Didn't she understand the suffering of the people?" As a black woman I couldn't understand why she would perform in a place where blacks were not welcomed, this was the 80's not the 60's when there was very little choice.

But that day standing in the line at Chick Fil-A I had failed my comrades in the movement over some darn waffle fries. My gut said to me, "You should get out of line and read about them." But I could taste those waffle fries and I promised that young man that I would. But that turned into a lie and the truth wasn't in it. To learn more, would force me into action and I was NOT giving up those waffle fries! NOT! So I went on with my life.

Then a week ago, I was forced with having to face my truths. I had seen some tweets about Chick-Fil-A, but I didn't click on the links. I was NOT giving up my waffle fries! I didn't want to know the details! Then my BFF Luke picked me up from the airport on Wednesday night as I arrived to New York City for Blog Her 12 and it was the first thing he hit me with.

Lawd, Lawd, Lawd, I didn't want to get involved I was NOT giving up one of the best milkshakes I've ever tasted in life. I said, "Boo,  So what he stands for what he believes in." Took a deep breath and continued, "You know I have a lot of critics too. Remember, I just wrote a book addressing my methodology. I got kicked out of Delta because I say what I mean and mean what I say and I don't apologize!"  I asked, "Why should the owner of Chick-Fil-A be punished because he stands for what he believes in?"

"But Boo," Luke said, "You don't understand. He's just not anti-gay, he supports organizers that depict gays as pedophile's and sub-human."  I took yet another deep breath, it was not looking good for my waffle fries. I started to listen. After a wonderful dinner at Chez Lucienne, a great French restaurant in Harlem, we grabbed dessert at Sylvia's and headed home to have it with some tea. I opened my laptop and goggled the debate and my mouth dropped to the floor. I knew then that I would never eat those waffle fries again. Never! And I'm mourning.

I was at Blog Her and that took all of my energy, so I just watched  the madness from the sidelines. The pictures of long lines, the debates on Facebook, the tweets and it all made my stomach turn. I couldn't deal with it then because I was deep into Blog Her 12, but I have to address this. I became sick to my stomach the more I read about how the chairman of the board of Chick-Fil-A spends his money. For Example, there is a claim that one organization Chick-Fil-A supports through its philanthropic organization, Winshape, spent $25,000 to lobby congress in support of the "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda. Click HERE for more on the Uganda campaign.

There is NOTHING Christian about that. NOTHING! When Jesus was brought the woman found committing adultery, He said to the people, "He who is without sin cast the first stone."  Russell Simmons-Global Grind did a great article on how Chick-Fil-A Money, Click HERE

For sure they have donated money to the Right Wing Organization the Family Foundation, that is an active advocate against important Stem Cell Research and the right for a woman to choose, along with its anti-gay issues that they promote.

While, I am always faced with the moral dilemma of abortion, I will never advocate or support someone who advocates the elimination of a woman's right to choose. The period before choice was ugly for women in the United States and I don't think the government has a right to tell a woman what she can do with her body, that's between her and God. And quiet as it's kept, the legislating of a woman's body has always been connected to the agenda of men from one end of the globe to the other.

There is a slippery slope when the government can regulate your body. I suggest you take in some history and read Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents, edited, by Brook Thomas. In a Democracy, it has been shown over and again, that when you open up the door for the disenfranchisement of one, it leads to the disenfranchisement of others.  That was the main argument in the one dissenter in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case, declaring separate but equal legal.

As a minister, I am saddened. The fact that people were standing in long lines to support what they believed to be a Christian idea. It showed me how much people don't really know about their own faith on the one hand, and on the other, I wondered if they were really standing in line to simply show their distain for gay life style and not their faith at all.  

This picking and choosing and layers of sin Christians seem to have is getting on my last nerve and truly it's simply justification for hate for what you don't understand, not about our Christian Faith.

FYI: For the Super SAVED......SIN is SIN and if you had sex this week and you are NOT married, that was SIN. There is NO where in the Bible where one sin is set above another. When Jesus was on the cross, He STOPPED dying for the thief; He didn't say, you gotta promise me you won't sin no more. He simply said, "Today you shall be with me in paradise."

 I'm going to say it again, Jesus gave two commandments in His earthly ministry, To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and to love thy neighbor as thyself. The kinds of organizations Chick-Fil-A gives money to are NOT about this love, it's about spreading hate, untruths and the disenfranchisement of segments of our society, from gays to women.  It's one thing to say you don't support gay life style, it is another thing to support organizations that advocate their death and or spread lies about them. 

I'm not sure which is worst, using the Bible to spread hate or our lack of knowledge about these issues.  I was extra saddened to see so many African-Americans jumping on the band wagon. Like really? Are we as a people that Saved and Self-righteous that we would become in solidarity with someone that spreads hate?

Have we forgotten that we were once declared sub-human to justify our bondage, first in slavery and then through Jim Crow laws?  And don't tell me that's different, because Dr. King fundamentally believed when one group of people are disenfranchised, we all were. Or have you only read the I Have a Dream speech and not his theological writings? Well, I suggest you pick up, A Testament of Hope, The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Have you forgotten, or maybe you didn't know that the CHIEF Strategist for the Civil Rights moment was a Black gay man, Rustin Baynard?  What is this? We have become a people I'm starting not to even know.

We will stand in the heat in long lines to show our dislike of Gay life style, but won't even tackle the fact that Bishop Eddie Long, is a pedophile, who groomed young boys of 12-13 with NO fathers to have sex with him and then when they were of legal age at 17 in the state of Georgia, he started the sexual relationship with them, so he couldn't go to jail. This was sick, a calculated pedophile and clergy abuse.  Then when Pastor Jamal Bryant got his assistant pregnant and she went public, she got kicked out of the church and ostracized.

What is wrong with us?  We will let R. Kelly lead a back to school parade for kids in Chicago, when he video taped himself having sex and then urinated on a 13 year old child and then we turned around and called her fast, rather than accept the sickness pushed onto her. We have mega churches that aren't addressing HIV/AIDS when it's the number one killer of black women between the ages of 25-34 and we as a people are 54% of all HIV cases in the United States and only 12% of the population. We throw away our family members who are gay, but we embrace a bigot in the name of Christianity.

I'm OVERit.com.  This is NOT who we are as a people. It is NOT. This is NOT what our religion is all about. May I suggest you pick up Theologian Howard Thurman's, "Jesus and the Disinherited."  He was Dr. King's Professor at Morehouse.

 So, I say what I mean and mean what I say.... I choose not to ever eat at Chick- Fil-A because Cathy the CEO, chooses to give his money to spread hate about gay life style and to turn back the hand of time on the rights of women. It is estimated that they have spent 5 million dollars supporting disenfranchisement of people. Click Here

I would respect him more, if he was just a strict fundamentalist, who truly practiced what believes.  But he is not living his faith, he is rich and dangerous. Not only does he spread hate, he supports organizations that set women's rights back a century or two. I cannot in my right mind support this madness that I see around Chick-Fil-A.

You all need to READ! It's one thing to support someone because they hold true to their values, it's another thing to support someone and you don't even know what their values are in its fullness, or to pick and choose the one value you agree with them on. The bottom line, the money is used to support ALL of their distorted ideas about the faith and not just the one you agree with. I'm done!

And you don't need to tell me that homosexuality is a sin or that I'm going to hell. I've already been told that I was not a Christian and that I was a whore. I'm so glad I know who I am and whose I am or I would be lost trying to follow you.

Instead, why don't you pray and ask God for forgiveness because of your judgments of people. You nor I have a heaven or hell to put someone in.

I'm just trying to live the best life I can in the best ways I can for my good and the good of others. I don't see, how all this self-righteous jabber going on is doing that. But what I know for sure, I will never eat Chick-Fil-A again. Waffle fries are not enough to sell my soul to hate and ideologies that turns the tide on women.



Some Other Blog Post On Chick-Fil-A and/or Religion

Huffington Post on Chick-Fil-A

Huffington Post on Religion and Politics.. Love this!

Appalachian Preacher Blog Post on Chic-Fil-A

Me, Myself and Jen Blog Post on Chic-Fil-A

Just in case you don't read any of the links I provided..... This was taken from the Huffington Post article on Religion... Now Christians... Think on these things.....

Looking at the life of Jesus we see that Jesus made room for those cut off from the rest of society. Jesus put a name and a face on all who had been forgotten or pushed aside, even the dead. Jesus called us to carry our cross daily and follow him. ... "The Christian Left" -- left hate behind; left prejudice; left callous attitudes; and followed Jesus as HE left the 99 in the fold, to go find the ones who were lost, ignored, excluded, overlooked, abandoned, uncared-for -- all "the least of these." We left hard-heartedness in order to be like the Samaritan who stopped to care for those in need.

Unfortunately in this country today, we have a sort of spiritual revival of the Pharisees -- people who don't want to practice love, grace, or compassion, but would rather try to bury people under legalistic demands that they themselves aren't capable of keeping. Culturally crusading right-wing Christians have substituted the Gospel of Jesus Christ for a Gospel of Morality. They've made it more about following rules than loving God ... and loving their fellow brothers and sisters. This is unacceptable.

Love God and love people. Forgive people over and over again, as you have been forgiven by God over and over again. Show mercy, as you have been shown mercy by God. Help the weak, the sick, the depressed, the poor, the jailed, the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast -- for one day you could be weak, sick, depressed, poor, jailed, oppressed, marginalized, outcast. It is also the only reasonable response to God's overwhelming grace -- sharing the same grace with the world.