It’s no surprise that conservatives co-opted the Chick-fil-A situation as a matter of free speech so that they could portray themselves as the victims. Despite their eager — if not snide — willingness to support the restaurant chain because it gives millions of dollars to anti-gay hate groups and ex-gay ministries, they are now trying to disassociate from the label that they are even anti-gay. Writing on behalf of a coalition of anti-gay organizations (including a litany of hate groups), the Media Research Center claimed today that the media’s accurate descriptions of Chick-fil-A’s positions constituted a “smear campaign” of “hate speech”:

On Thursday morning, the networks continued their smear campaign against Cathy as an anti-gay bigot and Chick-fil-A’s Christian principals as hate speech. CBS This Morning’s anchor Charlie Rose vilified patrons as anti-gay, stating that “thousands went there to eat and to make a statement – a statement against same sex marriage.” On Friday morning, Good Morning America’s Steve Osunsami similarly slandered Chick-fil-A and its leadership, mischaracterizing Chick-fil-A’s pro-traditional marriage stance as a “fight against gay Americans and gay marriage.”

It’s one thing to spin “oppose same-sex marriage” as “defend traditional marriage” — as almost every marriage equality opponent does — but it’s quite another to act as if they mean different things. In almost every media interview with participants in “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” they expressed that they opposed the freedom to marry, and that that was exactly why they felt the need to support Chick-fil-A. There’s nothing “slanderous” about Rose or Osunsami calling a spade a spade, and the liberal media bias is a myth to begin with, especially when it comes to religious perspectives on LGBT issues.

Chick-fil-A very much acts against the interests of LGBT people, as do its defenders. Just because they identify their ideologies as “Christian” makes them no less anti-gay bullies. Despite Brent Bozell’s desire to continue appropriating Christianity and patriotism for social conservatives, it’s hardly accurate to describe Chick-fil-A supporters as “proud Christians or free speech patriots.” Anti-gay is anti-gay, and it’s the LGBT people and allies who’ve lost ties with friends and family because of their obstinate positions against equality — or who feel less safe in their communities because of what they witnessed on Wednesday — who have been hurt the most.

Is Cheerios heart health just for heterosexuals?

The National Organization for Marriage is still boycotting General Mills for its support of marriage equality. Who knew? Though objections to Chick-fil-A’s anti-gay policies warranted national media coverage, little attention has been paid to NOM’s incredibly paltry “dump” campaigns. Yesterday NOM published a reminder that it hasn’t given up, with a new reason for conservatives to oppose General Mills: it will be promoting health! Here’s NOM’s Jonathan Baker:

General Mills has launched a new website, in cooperation with America Online and Everyday Health, hosted and staffed by the liberal Huffington Post news site. General Mills’ new website, called Live Better America, will offer what you might expect: recipes, nutrition and healthy eating tips from General Mills designed to appear “authentic” (read: “we want readers to believe these are real articles, not an advertising effort designed to boost our sales and products”).

Why would a company do this? The Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal asked that very question of General Mills. The response was that General Mills wanted to expand beyond food into lifestyle issues. The General Mills blog gives additional information that should give us pause: in addition to things like recipes, healthy eating, fitness and diet and nutrition—things you would expect a food company to cover—the site will cover mind and body issues and relationships. Look for these lifestyle, mind and body, and relationship articles to start off in a very benign manner (who thinks we don’t need a little more exercise?), but expect before long a transition into a renewed effort pushing for the redefinition of marriage and family in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Regardless of what NOM believes about marriage, same-sex couples are still going to have “mind and body issues and relationships” to deal with. If this new General Mills-sponsored project happens to give advice that is inclusive of the experiences of LGBT people, the worst that might happen is straight people learn something from it. NOM can actually only be objecting to one of two possibilities: that General Mills might acknowledge LGBT people exist or that it cares about them being healthy. It’s unclear which objection is more odious.

And how does NOM encourage its supporters to help the General Mills boycott? By continuing to support Chick-fil-A. Even NOM knows its effort has no legs, and after all, nothing promotes healthy lifestyles quite like eating more fried chicken.

Arguably, the Chick-fil-A fiasco has subsided with the completion of last week’s public demonstrations, but in its wake lie the complicated questions of where the chips fell. Here’s a round-up of issues to consider in the aftermath:

The Political Made Personal

The high visibility of the company’s anti-gay positions and giving has clearly had an impact, but one much less measurable than most of the coverage can truly examine: on the personal level. As people proudly boasted their support for Chick-fil-A on Facebook and other social media outlets, their LGBT family and friends were faced with the choice of how to respond, if at all. Justin Michael, a gay Christian, wrote to The Advocate about addressing this very situation with his parents:

I am a gay Christian.  This whole Chick-fil-A controversy meant nearly nothing to me until I saw a picture of my conservative parents (whom I love deeply) on Facebook yesterday proudly holding their Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

I broke down crying in front of my computer screen. And since I’m not good with speaking how I feel, I wrote my mother a Facebook message with my concerns about the photos.

She took them down and apologized for the insensitivity.  She was just supporting a man’s right for “freedom of speech.”

Getting The Talking Points Right

Indeed, this “freedom of speech” argument unfortunately dominated the coverage, despite being largely irrelevant to the actual controversy. There is no legal way for a city to block Chick-fil-A so long as it doesn’t discriminate, nor has anyone tried to censor Dan Cathy’s vitriolic remarks. Despite how quickly lawmakers backed away from empty threats to interfere with Chick-fil-A’s business, the media continued to let this infringement-of-freedom talking point circumvent the LGBT community’s objections. As a result, many would-be LGBT allies were seemingly defending Chick-fil-A by catering to this strawman talking point. The editorial board at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette acknowledged how many have gotten this wrong:

This had the effect of putting the company into the hottest broiler of the culture wars — the issue of same-sex marriage — but in America people can freely state their principles and act on them. And other people can criticize them for it. That’s how the First Amendment works. Those diners who came out last Wednesday in part because they thought that Chick-fil-A was being denied its First Amendment rights were wrong about that.

The Boston Globe similarly argued today that Mayor Tom Menino (D) hurt marriage equality efforts by turning “bullies like Dan Cathy into martyrs.” Michaelangelo Signorile further offered insights into how the messaging got off the tracks, how LGBT leadership was unfortunately not at the forefront of the effort, and how the response was poorly organized at various levels. There is much to be learned from the past three weeks that can be applied in future efforts to dissuade people from supporting anti-gay companies and organizations.
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Friday’s same-sex “Kiss-In” at Chick-fil-A might not have achieved the same traffic-stopping scope as Mike Huckabee’s Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, but it still attracted media attention across the country. Though its president, Dan Cathy, believes that same-sex couples are inviting God’s judgment upon society and the company has given millions of dollars toward opposing LGBT equality, that will not stop gays and lesbians from loving and building families. Here’s a look at some of the protests:

• In Decatur, Georgia, protesters encouraged Cathy to accept a dinner invitation from a same-sex family.
• In Atlanta, Georgia, a brief kiss-in protest sought to tell customers that “God loves everyone.”
• In Los Angeles, California, the kiss-in lasted well into the night, allowing for live 11:00 PM newscasts.
• In Dallas, Texas, a very small protest still attracted media attention, riling a customer to try to eject them from the property in the middle of an interview.
• In Omaha, Nebraska, protesters were confronted by a customer who said, “You don’t have to be a pervert!”
• The Huffington Post has a collection of photos from other protests in Pompano Beach, Florida, Birmingham, Alabama, Houston, Texas, and other locations around the country.

After the disheartening image of thousands of people proudly eating chicken on behalf of their anti-gay beliefs, these simple photos remind that the LGBT community is unfazed in its struggle toward the freedom to marry.

Here also is a special song performance from Daniel Torres, who is currently understudying Ricky Martin in Evita in Broadway. He encourages people not to eat at Chick-fil-A, reminding them that even though the restaurant claims to operate according to the Bible, you shouldn’t “chow down at Chick-fil-A if you support the gays”:

Herman Cain, the onetime GOP presidential frontrunner, weighed into the Chick-fil-A controversy during an appearance on Fox News on Friday and insisted that gay people are protesting the company’s opposition to equality for attention.

“This is simply an attempt on the part of the gay community to try and leverage their beliefs on another institution, a private company, since they can’t seem to get enough attention. That is what this is all about,” Cain told host Eric Bolling. Watch it:

Cain, who claimed that he spoke with Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy, said that the company’s sales exceeded $30 million during Wednesday’s “appreciation day,” “almost twice his previous high.” “They are going do take a lot of the excess profits they got on that day and contribute it to the charitable organizations they support in even bigger numbers,” Cain added.

The fast food chain has already donated millions of dollars to anti-gay organizations, including “reparative therapy” groups like Exodus International. Chick-fil-A is one of a very small number of major national companies that refuses to offer any employment protections to LGBT employees. In fact, the company received a 0 rating from the Human Rights Campaign and has a record of firing employees it believes engage in “sinful” behavior. Activists from across the country are protesting the company after its president condemned homosexuality in a recent radio interview.

On Thursday, Cain appeared on Fox News and praised Cathy for being “man enough and Christian enough” to oppose same-sex marriage.

Robert Gagnon, a founding member of the Restored Hope Network.

When Exodus International’s President Alan Chambers said recently that there’s no “cure” for homosexuality, one group of ex-gay therapists split off and formed their own splinter group, the Restored Hope Network, where they could continue to push the most extreme views on reparative therapy. According to Ex-Gay Watch, the Restored Hope Network has released its official doctrinal statement, providing a disturbing look at how Bible verses continue to be used to justify oppressing gays and lesbians. Here are some excerpts:

1. Sexual purity is a life-and-death matter. Sexual holiness for Christians matters to such an extent that a sexually immoral life can get even self-professed Christians excluded from the kingdom of God.

2. Jesus understood the male-female prerequisite for sexual relations established by God in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 to be foundational for sexual ethics… Genesis 1:27 indicates that changing a male-female requirement distorts the image of God.

3. Consistent with Jesus’ view of a male-female requirement for sexual relations is Scripture’s depiction of homosexual practice as a severe violation of God’s standards for sexual purity. Paul’s indictment of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 treats it as an example of humans suppressing the truth about themselves visible in the material structures of nature and a violation of Gen 1:27 and 2:24 that can lead to exclusion from God’s kingdom.

4. Sexual immorality is by no means limited to homosexual practice but has multiple manifestations in the heterosexual sphere that distort God’s purposes for sexual unions… Any expression of human sexuality outside the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, as well as any expression within marriage that is not self-giving, is a perversion of God’s will for sexual holiness.

7. Jesus Christ provides hope for transformation to broken sexual sinners… For some, this transformation may take shape as a significant reduction of unwanted sexual desires. For others, it may mean the grace to live in obedience in spite of ongoing urges to do what God forbids. Either way, Paul gives believers assurance that those who “walk in the Spirit will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”

Essentially, these “therapists” believe that accepting one’s gay identity is an automatic ticket to Hell. (Arguably, point number four also raises the stakes for heterosexual couples who might engage in oral sex, anal sex, or any sexual practice that doesn’t lead to procreation.) The only choice for people with same-sex attractions is to undergo — and pay for — harmful, ineffective repression ministries or deprive themselves of love by living a life of celibacy. Nothing about what this group preaches has any remote connection to psychological research or promoting mental health. The Restored Hope Network is seeking to completely deny the very xistence of gay people, what many have argued constitutes a form of genocide.

These Restored Hope Network ”therapists” were part of the Exodus International umbrella until the last few months. That means that this is the kind of rhetoric Chick-fil-A has supported with its profits with its annual giving to Exodus.