Chickens? Marriage? Frogs? What is this?

First of all... Chick-fil-a, noooo!

I do enjoy Chick-fil-A, especially the nuggets.  I've enjoyed them ever since they showed up in a local mall in the mid 80s, back then right next to a large video game arcade.  They've always been closed on Sundays for religious reasons, which I found a rather antiquated policy and often annoying (how often have I had a craving for Chick-fil-A and realized that it's Sunday?), but whatever.  You don't have to open a business when you don't want to, for any reason you choose.

But the other week I heard their president has announced opposition to marriage equality, touting biblical marriage, that he knows better than the rest of us, saying "I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about."  As if that's not what people have always done, including him.  Not to mention that marriage in the Bible is pretty darn weird, what with the concubines and rape victims being forced to marry their rapists and polygamy and executing non-virgin brides and so on and so forth.  What, you don't follow those outdated precepts and traditions anymore, Mr Chicken?  Are you, too, guilty of arrogantly defining marriage due to changing cultural and social standards?

And even then, up until the 11th and 12th centuries, the Church didn't get involved in marriage.  Marriage was a common law thing, defined by the community.  Priests weren't involved and marriages didn't even take place inside the church.  It wasn't until the middle ages that they decided to turn marriage into a holy sacrament and made various laws enforcing it.  Later on, protestants would come out against that, removing marriage as a sacrament and returning it to the realm of earthly, civic jurisdiction.  Marriage has always been defined and redefined as needed by a society.

Well, anyway, even that's not all that important when it comes to selecting your vendor of battered chicken.  You can believe what you want.  Every CEO has their own personal beliefs or lack thereof, and is free to live his or her life accordingly.  Closing your business for whatever reason doesn't hurt anyone.  It's when I learned the company's been donating millions of dollars to oppose legalization of gay marriage, support of anti-gay conversion camps, and criminalization of homosexuality that I have to ask myself if I can give any money to a company that purposefully attempts to actively cause harm to others, make life harder people they don't like, and stand in the way of other people's pursuit of happiness while using religious dogma as an excuse for their own bigotry.

[Edit 8-04: This morning I was stuck behind an suv with its back and side windows painted "LOVES GOD AND JESUS, GOING STRAIGHT TO CHICK-FIL-A!"  Lovely, so now eating fried chicken is a religious statement.  And then, as if to punctuate his piety and demonstrate his civic-mindedness, the driver chucked an empty Chick-fil-A cup out of his window into the street.  Littering is next to godliness!]

But I was pleased to hear that the Jim Henson Company, which had been working with Chick-fil-A, has ceased their business relationship because of the company's stance.  Good on ya.  There's a company that's never ceased to amaze and, thanks to its movies and shows (Fraggle Rock, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth) shaped my childhood imagination to a strong degree.  So I thought I'd share this to wash away the bitterness.  Remember it?