People who
believe that gays have, just as straight people do, the right to marry were
outraged that Cathy could publically support bigotry and homophobia. (Followers
of this issue already knew of Cathy’s stance, as the company had donated
millions of dollars to anti-gay groups previously.) Marriage, as many religious
conservatives don’t realize, is much more than a religious practice. In the
United States, it’s a civil practice, and it comes with thousands of federal
rights which are denied to gays. Conservative figures like Rick Santorum, Mike
Huckabee, Billy Graham, and Sarah Palin have weighed in on the debate,
publically supporting Cathy’s views, and asking their supporters to eat at
Chick-Fil-A. On the other end of the political spectrum, politicians like
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, have told the
company that it is unwelcome in their cities, and gay rights activists have
called for a boycott of Chick-Fil-A.
For animal
activists, there is much more to dislike about Chick-Fil-A than their position
on gay marriage. It has gone unmentioned in the current debate, but Chick-Fil-A
makes its profits—Chick-Fil-A is valued at $4.5 billion—off of the sale of
slaughtered chickens. In 2010, the company sold over 282 million chicken
sandwiches, which equals to 537 sandwiches a minute or 9 per second. Because
each sandwich contains one full breast, and a chicken has two breasts, that
means that 141 million chickens were killed in 2010 for Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.
In other words, 268 chickens per minute or 4.5 chickens per second lost their
lives to meet the demands of Chick-Fil-A’s hungry customers and to increase the
profits for the Cathy family.
Obviously,
Chick-Fil-A is just one of countless fast-food and regular restaurant chains to
sell chicken. Americans eat 7 billion chickens per year, and as most educated
consumers know, these animals spend the majority of their lives in confinement,
never experiencing fresh air, green grass, or an afternoon kicking up their
feet in the sun. Instead, they live and die in misery, and are not even
protected by a single federal law; they are excluded from all federal animal
protection laws. If you’ve ever spent time with a chicken, you probably know
that they are smart, inquisitive and funny animals, who enjoy the most simple pleasures—pleasures
which are denied to billions of these animals per year.
Boycotting
Chick-Fil-A probably won’t do much to further the cause of marriage equality
for all in this country. Chick-Fil-A has enough socially conservative
customers, especially in the southern states, to make up for those who no
longer give the company their business. But no longer eating chicken sandwiches
at Chick-Fil-A, or at McDonald’s, KFC, or any of the countless other
restaurants and establishments that serve chicken, could make a serious dent in
the number of chickens who die each year.
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