Posted on 08/15/2012 10:28:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Thinking Out Loud
There were so many things I could have written about today: openly lesbian Tammy Smith's promotion to the rank of brigadier general and the fact that the military is still intact after DADT, or Thomas Beatie's (once dubbed the "pregnant man") divorce court struggles due to Arizona's confusion about his gender, or perhaps the fact that NBC's Olympic coverage actually included mention of out gay Olympians. Instead, I'm still stuck on Chick-fil-A.
Oh, that's so last month. Let's move on already!
I argued with myself about this. On one hand, it was hardly a lunch counter sit-in. It had no gravitas - it was about fried chicken for God's sake! It involved the Palins and people tweeting pictures of waffle fries to the world. Chick-fil-A support rallies have come and gone and Rahm Emanuel has already forgotten his pledge to keep Chicago Chick free.
On the other hand, did we win or lose this one? No one told me. I get the distinct feeling we lost. Last I heard, the far right has claimed the right to jump up and down about protecting free speech and have redefined "bullying" to refer to how the LGBT community is frighteningly intolerant of traditional values.
Yeah, I think we lost. While Chick-fil-A probably lost the LGBT part of their market, they're not licking their wounds about it. No one learned any lessons on either side and the divide between us with regard to LGBT people remains as wide as it ever was.
I implore everyone not to let this moment go completely to waste. There are some big lessons we can learn from our Chick-fil-A outrage:
First, never let anyone tell you that supporting bigotry means supporting free speech. There is a difference. Imagine if Chick-fil-A's Dan Cathy went on record about an alien abduction experience or, say, a very special love for plush animals, you can bet that no one would line up at his store to support his free speech rights then.
What the pro-Chick people were saying, bottom line, was that they agreed with Cathy. This had nothing to do with Cathy's free speech rights, but their own free speech rights. They are absolutely entitled to eat as much chicken as they like to show they don't like same-sex marriage (seriously, go right ahead if you think it will stop the gays...), but don't let them pull us into a red-herring argument about the Bill of Rights. When we look like we're silencing people, we play right into an increasingly popular trope about the liberal elite imposing their agenda on average Americans.
This was our big - albeit understandable - mistake, focusing solely on Dan Cathy's words and not on his actions. We looked like we just wanted him to shut up, when in fact he was speaking for a lot of ordinary Americans. The argument stalled out right there.
We'd have been better off if we took Chick-fil-A on for all the atrocious things it's done through its charitable foundation, WinShape. I discussed this in a previous column, but in short, WinShape has put millions toward "ex-gay" therapy, stopping same-sex marriage and fighting against LGBT equality. It has us in its crosshairs. Cathy's words are so insignificant in light of what Cathy's checkbook reveals that they hardly merit more than an audible sigh.
Still, in this ADD-friendly, 140-character news cycle, glib comments ricochet and amplify almost instantly, while an IRS 990 form showing charitable income and expenses doesn't trigger the same shocking umbrage. But it should.
This brings me to the second big lesson we can learn: the only way to show the world that our lives are not appropriate fodder for debate are to tell our individual stories. Forget throwing accusations about whose words are more offensive to whom - that's only helpful for talking head arguments on cable TV. Get over being offended; be honest instead. Talk about the lives that have been damaged by praying the gay away, or families that have been torn apart by discrimination, or the kids who have tried to kill themselves rather than accept their beautiful LGBT selves. Tell your story. That is free speech at its most powerful.
What a loser.! Abby Dees. This is your LIFE????????????? Wow. What a waste.
...is to tell. This nitwit has the same trouble with verbs as Zero.
We now have Chick-fil-A Wednesdays...yahoo!
I was pulling up to the local CFA yesterday and the kids were screaming “no daddy, please not again” and since the line was longer than usual, we decided to go back home and grill some hot dogs.
They got their collective butts handed to them in an overpowering display of support of a Christian taking a public stand against their perverse behavior.
And now comes the, "Oh, well. It wasn't that big of a deal anyway."
Yeah. Right.
It's like a #1 ranked team getting hammered in a title game and then saying, "Didn't matter."
If it wasn't that important, why the temper tantrum?
If it wasn't that big of a deal, why the Homo-Kiss-in(where miniscule numbers participated)to show how mighty is the homosexual community?
If it wasn't that important, then why double down on showing your insignificance?
Pathetic mewling of a pervert.
And you can bet your sweet bippy that if the homosexuals had shown up in as large numbers as the news media was there to cover, this entire column would be one of infinite gloating.
She should just go to JC Penney's and tell her story to ALL those customers who must be outfitted in camo since they can't be seen.
>>What does “why 2” mean?<<
Sorry, I popped that off a little quickly.
We know that traditional marriage is one man and one woman — it is the bedrock of the nuclear family and thus the bedrock of society. All our laws and mores reflect this certainty.
“Why 2?” for gays means just that. There is no biological imperative so there sis no meaning at all to the number of people in a “marriage” relationship.
There is no meaning to gay “marriage” — by allowing it e redefine marriage as “2 to n people of any gender or sex in a legal contact.” It includes siblings and other incestuous relationships.
“Why 2” is the defining question on why gays are destroying the concept of marriage. I can explain why a man and a woman create a union based on many thousands of year of human interaction. Gay “marriage” is just arbitrary assemblage.
Yes, “why 2” is a devastating argument.
Could you have voiced your point a little more strongly, Mark? You were way too nice.
Seriously, excellent post. And much more can be said about the demonic, murderous nature of the homosexual Left.
The comments are priceless.
This guy ain’t happy, either:
Sentence GLAAD to a pit of Chick-fil-A
http://www.pridesource.com/article.html?article=55157
You have this absolutely right. Propagandists know that "he who controls the language controls the argument, and he who controls the argument controls the people."
Something that conservatives have allowed leftists to get away with is redefining the language. "Hate" used to mean something very different than the leftists have been forcing down our throats for some time now. "Hate" is now defined as anything with which the left disagrees. In the eyes of most leftists, traditional Christians and Jews are no different than Klansmen. And this is supported by groups like the SPLC, but then they've morphed into nothing more than a hard-core leftist mouth-piece, no different than the ADL or the NAACP.
The left needs to be slapped down ASAP, before they bastardize the language any further, and their redefinition of the language needs to be rolled back.
Mark
“Those who control the language control minds.” Ayn Rand
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