This story originally appeared on Out.
My mom is from South Carolina. I was born in South Carolina. I know the difference between amazing fried chicken, mediocre fried chicken, and everything in between. Chick-fil-A's fried chicken is mediocre at best. And all y'all suckers who will inevitably defend them are falling victim to a huge corporation's near-constant marketing blitz. Whether you choose to believe it or not, you are all supporting one of the most economically homophobic organizations in the world.
Today on Today, co-anchor Craig Melvin sat down with Chick-fil-A's CEO, Andrew Cathy, for what Cathy most certainly believed would be a softball interview. But thankfully, the broadcast journalist had another idea. When Melvin asked him about Chick-fil-A's very long and public history of well-funded homophobia, Cathy very robotically said:
“Well, for anybody that hasn't tried us, we'd love for you to come try and have our great-tasting food and the hospitality that we're known for,” Cathy said. “I think that everybody that will be willing to walk in the door, they'll see that they're welcome to come eat with us. We'd love to give them a great-tasting sandwich and give them great hospitality.”
From one person born in South Carolina to another, thank you, Craig Melvin! There is absolutely nothing hospitable about hatred and homophobia. There is no honor in spreading hatred under the guise of God and religion. There is nothing moral about evading a very legitimate question on one of the most-watched national morning shows in the country. There is nothing hospitable about Chick-fil-A.
This is not a story about a saccharine billionaire chicken salesman who may happen to believe homosexuality is a sin. This is about money, and lots of it. In 2009 alone, Chick-fil-A Inc. poured more than $7.8 million into the Cathy family's WinShape Foundation, which distributed more than $1.7 million to organizations identified by LGBTQ+ advocates as opponents of equality. The following year, WinShape directed nearly $2 million to such groups, and by 2011, the figure had climbed past $3.6 million. The recipients included organizations fighting marriage equality, promoting the idea that homosexuality could be changed through religious intervention, and building a national infrastructure for conservative Christian political advocacy. And years after the controversy became national news, Chick-fil-A's own corporate foundation was still writing seven-figure checks to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, an organization that barred same-sex sexual activity among its leaders. So, let's not let the richest bigots in the country tell us about Southern hospitality. Let's instead really talk about a documented financial relationship sustained over years, through public controversy, corporate reassurances, and repeated opportunities to reconsider where the money was going.
All that money did exactly what it was meant to do. It helped sustain a network of organizations that spent decades fighting to deny LGBTQ+ Americans the same rights and protections enjoyed by everyone else, while the broader American evangelical movement exported similar campaigns abroad. In countries like Uganda, American religious activists helped promote the political and moral arguments used to justify criminalizing homosexuality, creating environments where queer people could be imprisoned, persecuted, or forced into hiding. Back home, those same arguments have been repackaged into campaigns against marriage equality, transgender health care, LGBTQ+ visibility in schools, and basic civil rights protections. The organizations, funding streams, and political campaigns are not all identical, but the ideological apparatus is unmistakably connected. This is what happens when religious prejudice acquires institutional backing, political influence, and enormous financial resources. It stops being merely someone's personal belief and becomes an organized effort to determine how other people are allowed to live.
No one who knows and loves (or even likes) a member of the LGBTQ+ community should be spending one cent at Chick-fil-A.
Back to Southern values and Southern hospitality. Men like Andrew Cathy are one of the reasons the South gets a bad reputation. A beady-eyed, smiley white guy who lacks the bravery and moral conviction to admit what he is and what he funds. Hateful, homophobic bigotry processed into actual legislation that has real-world consequences. And that is not who should represent the South.
My mom raised us with actual moral convictions. She taught us about slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, segregation, integration, the AIDS crisis, homophobia, misogyny, the whole shebang. She encouraged us to build friendships with people who didn't look like us, think like us, or come from the same backgrounds. Everyone was welcome in our home. But if one of our friends made a racist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted joke, she'd kick them right out of the house and let their parents know exactly why.
And if someone needed help, she made damn sure we showed up. That is the Southern hospitality I was raised with, and that is the South I know. It's a damn shame places like Chick-fil-A get to represent an entire region of our country with their dumbed-down version of Southern food served with a heaping side of hatred and bigotry. The bigger shame is the American public's insistence on turning a blind eye to a company that has done and continues to do significant damage here at home and abroad.
In the vein of John Waters's timeless philosophy, “If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them,” let's try something new.
Don't fuck anyone who eats at Chick-fil-A.
Josh Ackley is a political strategist and the frontman of the queerpunk band The Dead Betties. @momdarkness.
