Yesterday, while hanging out with a friend, I saw something over his shoulder that made me queasy. Taken out of context, it was an innocuous sight: a young woman slurping soda out of a fast food cup.
Except, it was a Chick-Fil-A cup. Here, in Toronto. One day after the chain's first location opened in the city, and all the way across town.
It was distressing because it made me realize that I'm going to see those cups everywhere now. I'm going to see Chick-Fil-A bags and wrappers all the time, here, in my diverse, inclusive, queer-friendly city. And every time I see them, I'm going to feel less welcome here.
There's not much I can do about it, either. I stopped by the protests of the chicken chain's opening on Friday so that I could see for myself what was happening. There was a line-up around the block at 11am. People were more than happy to cross the protest line and be seen, even filmed and photographed, defiantly lining up for a fried chicken breakfast.
And some of them didn't just want to eat the chicken, they wanted to tell the protesters why it was okay for them to eat the chicken. One lady yelled out, "I have gay friends. You think I'm homophobic? I have gay friends." An older man told me he voted for Trudeau (serving centrist realness, yass queen). A smirking kid hiding behind large mirrored sunglasses insisted that McDonald's is just as bad.
The problem, if you haven't heard, is that Chick-Fil-A is an anti-LGBTQ organization. It's not just that the founder (now dead) publicly opposed same-sex marriage (he believed in a "biblical definition of marriage." There is no such thing). It's that company profits are poured into charities that actively seek to oppress and marginalize queer people, especially organizations that oppress queer youth.
Young queer people are unusually vulnerable. Their rates of depression and suicide are higher than those of their muggle peers. They often struggle to find support in their own communities, and even in their own families.
They're not miserable because they're queer. They're miserable because the stigmatization of queerness by family, church, school, society, politicians and the media has left them lonely, ostracized, marginalized. They're miserable because people will not acknowledge, accept, and love them -- and in many cases, the very people that they should be able to trust and turn to are the ones most likely to harass, harm, and abuse them.
I've devoted much of my life to advocating for and creating media that allows queer kids to see themselves represented and accepted. It's important to me, both as someone who knows the struggle of growing up queer and as someone who took to heart lessons of love and kindness from a Christian upbringing. (Other systems of moral teaching are available. Ask your provider for details.)
The folks at Chick-Fil-A took a different lesson from Christ's words (and attendant appendices). Buy a meal from them, and some share of the money you spend will be used to increase the suffering of queer kids, which will drive more of them towards depression, isolation, and suicide. It's not what Jesus wants, but it's what they want, so it's what they want their version of Jesus to want.
Moral purity is impossible in a capitalist society. We know this, it's a sophomore common room insight. Every week, you're spending money in ways that harm the environment, spread political strife and discord, and empower the greedy and corrupt. There's a good chance your closet contains at least some sweatshop clothing. You have to decide for yourself how to limit or counterbalance those choices, and sometimes it's not even a free decision. Means and opportunity may limit the choices you make.
One of the lines I've chosen to draw is that I will not support a company that is ideologically opposed to my existence, and that will use any money I spend there to campaign against my existence.
No, not even for fried chicken.
And, you have to understand, I really like fried chicken.
Okay, so it's actually an easy line to draw. There are more than a dozen places to get fried chicken within a ten minute walk of the Toronto location of Chick-Fil-A, for the same price or less. You know who does amazing fried chicken? H Mart, the Korean-American grocery store. There are two locations a short walk from Yonge and Bloor. There's a Popeyes down the street, and a Church's just beyond that, and a Jollibee is opening soon. Downtown Toronto is the Vatican City of fried chicken.
It doesn't matter. What I realised when I stopped by the protests on Friday is that people are not just going to Chick-Fil-A because they want to eat fried chicken. They're going because they want to eat fried chicken spitefully.
They're going to Chick-Fil-A because they've been asked not to. They're defiantly standing in a long line with all the other free-thinkers to show the world that they won't believe everything they read on Facebook -- just all the conservative things they read on Facebook. These fine folks know that going to Chick-Fil-A hurts queer people, but they've never thought much about queer people before, and damn it, they're not going to start now, and certainly not if it stops them eating this one specific chicken. And they'll use words like "stupid" and "weird" to describe the people who care enough to object, because the PC police won't let them use the words they really want to use.
It's a strange form of identity politics, where the identity is "asshole". It's not the line to get into Chick-Fil-A, it's the asshole pride parade.
The protests are not going to reach these people, even if their consciences are so itchy that they need to reassure me they "voted for Trudeau." Their insensitive contrarian identities are set in stone. We can only hope the protests reach the people in the middle, and that enough people stay away (and the PR is sufficiently bad) that the company rethinks its support for anti-queer organizations and starts giving back.
We're not going to shut Chick-Fil-A down or chase it out of town. Chick-Fil-A is here to stay. In Donald Trump's America, it's a huge success, the number three fast food chain in the country. Attempts to stop it opening shop in progressive spaces have been met with the passage of laws designed to expressly protect the chain in the name of "religious freedom," which shows you how debased the concept of religion has become.
It's going to be a success in Toronto, too. It's especially infuriating that the company opened its first Canadian location on the edge of the city's Queer Village, on the route of the annual Pride Parade, but other locations will follow, all over the city. Like a pox.
We'll see that logo everywhere, its meaning as clear as a red hat. It's the closest thing they have to a reverse rainbow flag. Except, it's going to serve the most casual form of performative bigotry. After all, they're just eating lunch.
We'll see it all over town. The evidence of how cheap our existence is to them. The signal that people like us are easily dismissed if we come between them and a sandwich. They'll toss the wrapper in the trash and show us that the lives of queer kids are worth less to them than that.
Chick-Fil-A has released a poison into this city's bloodstream that tells queer people we're less welcome here. We're less safe.
We know that we're constantly surrounded by people who hate us. You're never more than six feet away from a rat. Now the city has a new way to throw hate in our faces. Were we getting too comfortable before, with our corporate bunting in June and our occasional appearances in ads for cleaning products? Never fear. The people who hate us can show us how easily, how thoughtlessly, they reach for that hate.
And the more they see each other, the more empowered they will be. Hate is going to rise in this city. Because they couldn't walk 500 feet to Popeyes.
Watch where you step. Chick-Fil-A trash is all over these streets.
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