{"id":111,"date":"2012-10-25T04:37:05","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T04:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/?p=111"},"modified":"2012-10-26T18:19:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T18:19:53","slug":"chick-full-a-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/2012\/10\/25\/chick-full-a-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Chick-full-A Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Chick-Fil-A cows protest\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.madamenoire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/chick-fil-a-anti-gay-cartoon-2-4-11.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"336\" \/>I&#8217;m sure most of the Skeptic Ink reading crowd is familiar with the controversy surrounding WinShape, Chick-fil-A&#8217;s charitable arm. If you&#8217;re not, the breakdown of the situation is basically that they gave<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/11\/01\/chick-fil-a-donated-anti-gay-groups-2009_n_1069429.html\"> millions and millions of dollars<\/a> to anti-gay groups, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.splcenter.org\/get-informed\/intelligence-files\/groups\/family-research-council\">one <\/a>that is identified as hate group by the Southern Poverty Law center. This has lead to numerous calls for boycotts and protests over the last few years, with a huge upswing in attention this summer, positive and negative, over comments CFA president Dan Cathy made.<\/p>\n<p>In an interesting turn of events, the real issue &#8211; that people can (and in my opinion, should) make a conscious decision not to support groups that support discrimination &#8211; was obfuscated by ultra-conservatives and reframed as a <a href=\"http:\/\/newsok.com\/chick-fil-a-support-protests-are-planned-in-oklahoma-city-area\/article\/3697127\">free speech issue<\/a>. While not the case at all, this struck a huge nerve with many and led to the so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/OTUS\/chick-fil-supporters-gather-appreciation-day\/story?id=16904664\">Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day<\/a>, where people stuffed themselves with fried chicken to show their support of &#8220;free speech,&#8221; and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2012\/08\/02\/us\/us-chick-fil-a-debate\/index.html\">counter-protests<\/a>, which involved same-sex kisses outside of those same locations serving the aforementioned chicken.<\/p>\n<p>The university where I work has a Chick-fil-A in our student union&#8217;s food court. It is the top money maker among the eateries there, and students flock (no pun intended) to it day in and day out. The campus group I advise, the UCO Skeptics, had actually begun planning consciousness-raising informational booths\u00a0 last spring, with the goal of eventually trying to remove CFA and replace it with an eatery that does not support discrimination (similar to what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2012\/08\/03\/student-protests-raise-philosophical-and-practical-issues\">other colleges<\/a> have done). To date, we have collected over 300 signatures calling for the removal of the franchise from campus and they even put together an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.change.org\/petitions\/university-of-central-oklahoma-remove-chick-fil-a-restaurant-from-campus\">online petition<\/a> to sign for those unable to stop by in person. Today this got picked up by the campus news:<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/youtu.be\/cf7W7DoU7o4<\/p>\n<p>I am proud of my students for many reasons, but taking an active stance in their community and standing up for their beliefs tops the list, and I know they will keep at it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE (10\/26\/2012) &#8211; The petition drive got picked up by the largest newspaper in Oklahoma (the Daily Oklahoman) for a nice <a href=\"http:\/\/newsok.com\/university-of-central-oklahoma-student-groups-call-for-removal-of-on-campus-chick-fil-a\/article\/3722402\">story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure most of the Skeptic Ink reading crowd is familiar with the controversy surrounding WinShape, Chick-fil-A&#8217;s charitable arm. If&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism-2","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}