"One Last Cluck"

What qualifications do you use when choosing to do business with a company? Recently, the restaurant chain “Chick-fil-A” has been involved is a controversy over the owners saying they were a Christian company and supported the teachings of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I don’t believe there are Bible verses on their wrappers or printed on the cups they use. I have never been “witnessed to” by any of the counter workers, who were very polite and friendly. I was never asked if I believed in Jesus (which I do). I was never handed any item of a religious nature, and nobody asked if they could “pray for me” while I was eating a meal at “Chick-fil-A”. All I ever got from “Chick-fil-A” was a tasty chicken sandwich that I thoroughly enjoyed. Others must have enjoyed eating there too as the line I was in was fairly lengthy. I didn’t hear anybody in line talking about Jesus, or what they were doing at church that coming Sunday; they were just some people eating lunch, and nobody seemed to care about the religious philosophy of the owner!

I guess, in our politically correct society of today, one is obligated to believe nothing, or believe everything in order to survive in business.

I always believed that the 1^st amendment was applied in all 50 states (not 57 states) equally; everybody has a right to have an opinion, from the billionaire to the welfare recipient, we can all speak up.

I now have seen that the 1^st amendment doesn’t apply in certain cities in America. After Boston said they would not allow this chain to open, some other cities jumped on the bandwagon of non-free speech. Vincent Gray of Washington D.C., Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, Edwin Lee of San Francisco and New York City Councilwoman Christen Quinn have all said “Chick-fil-A” would not be welcome in their cities because of their openly Christian beliefs about marriage. Having formerly lived in Chicago, I know how the system works up there, and I know building inspectors and licensing bureaus can either make it easy, or make it hard for any prospective business to succeed or fail; it’s all about who likes you, and who DOESN’T. I’m sure those other cities also have their version of “the Chicago way” of doing business too.

I can only act for myself, but I would like to make some suggestions for those who find this type of government coercion disgusting and totally un-American. If you believe in free speech and are planning a vacation somewhere, perhaps you should consider somewhere other than the above mentioned cities; you know, express your opinion with your dollars. If you are planning to open a business, perhaps you would consider a location other than the above mentioned cities; after all, they shouldn’t be infected with more people who believe in free speech, or traditional values. If you are already located in these cities and are planning to expand, you may want to reconsider that expansion to an area that is more interested with providing employment than censoring what you may believe in.

I don’t want “adult book stores” next to schools, but they have a right to open them (yucky). This stuff is what zoning ordinances are for. If this is allowed to succeed, who will be the next ones to be excluded from the city limits because of “perceived intolerance”? Could Jewish Temples, Muslim Mosques, Catholic Churches or Protestant Churches be targeted for their “intolerance”?

Politicians need to know their limits, and understand they don’t have free reign over our Constitutional rights. They don’t have the authority to limit the marketplace to businesses because of owner belief or opinion. If a business fails ,it should be because they didn’t provide a good product and the public should be the judge of that; not some mayor or councilman!!

That Bill of Rights belongs to ALL OF US, and no official elected or appointed has a right to alter them to fit their conception of what is “allowable”!