Chick-fil-A, my favorite fast food chain, has been on my mind lately.
This is not my blog about politics, but I'm about to get a little bit political, and then bring it back to something that I feel is quite non-partisan.
I'm currently of the mindset that as a straight man, but an ally of the LGBTQWTFBBQ community, that I shouldn't eat at Chick-fil-A because the owner of the company made donations to political groups hellbent on denying members of the aforementioned community of many acronyms and orientations from what many feel is their right to marriage.
This makes me sad, because there's nothing I love more between two buns than a slab of fried chicken and a pickle, but also because I'm not really sure if people are outraged because of the donations, or because the moron made the faux pas of publicly admitting that he made those donations. It's no secret that private and corporate money from all sorts of companies that we socially conscious young left-wing types deal with on a daily basis goes to political groups lobbying against all sorts of things that we care, or claim to care about. Typically, unlike in the case of this chicken fiasco, oil executives don't come out and talk in front of microphones and cameras about how they're lobbying for the rights to keep using their phallus/drill to have their way with the Earth in the name of quick money and "cheap" energy, but we know that they're doing it.
Keep the skeletons in the closet, and we can ignore them. Maybe Americans today are very shallow politically, but that's not actually the thing about the Chicken Fiasco of 2012 that interests me.
I had a conversation on Facebook with a few friends, in which I stated that attacking Chick-fil-A publicly and aggressively might not be the best option in this situation, because the political views that led Chick-fil-A to make these donations was based on faith, and attacking someone's faith is the surest way to end a constructive conversation.
If I were to say that people who oppose gay marriage based on Christianity are wrong because Christianity is not true, THE REST OF THE CONVERSATION WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO READ BECAUSE IT WOULD BE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS AND CONTAIN INNUMERABLE MISPELINGS AND EXCALMASHUN POINTS!!!!11!1one
Attacking someone's faith is never helpful.
That thought is what has been on my mind for the last few weeks. How do we have a reasoned conversation about something that is ultimately a human rights issue, with people opposed to it because their faith tells them that it is immoral, a sin, and an abomination for a homosexual couple to exist, let alone get married?
My gut reaction is to say that we simply don't, but that is wrong, and it reveals that I, the socially conscious young left-wing type am just as ignorant and bigoted as the bible thumping evangelical preacher. This is a conversation that we as a society need to have, but we have been maneuvered into a position where it just doesn't seem like there can be a reasoned debate, because one side has God backing them up, and the other side's main argument is essentially that God is stupid.
I think that we, the young socially conscious left-wing types, need to take a step back and examine ourselves. We too have faith, and that makes us a lot more like the people that we perceive as our foes than will make many of us comfortable.
I'm not saying that I have some sort of religious faith, or that we as a whole have a religious faith, although there are many religious people in this country that do support gay marriage, and can be considered socially conscious left-wing types, but we all have our own set of personal morals and ideas that we use to define ourselves and how we interact with the world around us.
I believe in science, and the harm principle. If you attack science and the scientific method, I'll become defensive about it, because I have internalized my understanding of science and use it to interpret the things that I see in the world around me. I will not stab you, because the harm principle clearly tells me that stabbing you is immoral because I would be harming you, and I would certainly not want to be stabbed myself. And that is no different than a religious person getting prickly about an attack on his or her faith.
I clearly believe that my scientific knowledge and secular philosophy is superior to religious faith as a basis for one's morality, but because I understand the way in which I'm using my faith in science and my philosophy to interpret the world, I can understand why we now have people crowding into Chick-fil-A restaurants to show their support for the chain. Christians as a whole were told that their morality is faulty because they don't want to extend the rights and responsibilities of marriage to couples that don't fit into the heterosexual mold, while they've been told their entire lives by church leaders that homosexuality is sinful. If Panera came out in opposition to teaching intelligent design in public schools, you'd find me eating a lot of bagels and french onion soup, and you'd find a lot of Christians standing outside with signs, or boycotting the restaurant.
My long, meandering point is this; we all have a lot more in common than we think. And this absurd debate about gay marriage based on secular vs. religious definitions of morality is never going to progress in either direction if we keep standing apart from each other waving signs and shouting slogans rather than extending our hands, and trying to build more inclusive communities based on an understanding of our differences. And that message applies to every political issue we currently face, not just the struggle for marriage equality.
Keep fighting the good fight, but embrace compromise, and steady incremental progress.
