You can dig further if you like, they do publish financial reports so you can see where their money is going and where it has gone in previous years. Here’s their 2018 Stewardship Report.

Where it gets confusing is when both liberal and conservative news sources are claiming that this is about LGBT support or non-support. The conservatives call it capitulation, the liberals say it’s just a distracting tactic and not enough, etc. NO ONE is happy with Chick-fil-A right now. (Everyone from CNN to National Review has written about it so you can see many viewpoints, from both camps — I think both are guilty of feeding the outrage machine, which in the end is non-productive. We have bigger problems to worry about and primary vocations to pay attention to.)

Who knows really what their objective is, I didn’t see anything in their statement that indicated one way or the other, just specifying what their focus is (all positive sounds like, on the surface anyway) and that they’re ceasing multiyear commitments. (Birgit Jones presents a more thorough analysis here.)

I like the approach that the pro LGBT folks who love Chick-fil-A took back in 2015: they love the chicken, so they didn’t care whether CFA supported same sex marriage or not. They kept buying the chicken because it’s a good product. Personally I like Chick-fil-A but not that much that I would go out of my way to buy their product. We prefer home cooked chicken. They’re good for emergency meals. 

It’s good to boycott and petition when we can but I wouldn’t get bent out of shape trying to do so since all these companies a) bottom line want to make money b) will support what they want to support and if you dig deep enough most of them support something that’s not Christian or Catholic or plain moral. So we can vote with our $$ so to speak but ultimately that’s going to look different from family to family. E.g., if we wanted to be 100% in line with Catholic faith hubby would have to quit his job, we would stop shopping at Kroger and Walmart and Amazon and only support Catholic owned businesses because many Protestant vendors hold anti marriage anti family anti life and anti Catholic beliefs, in other words we’d have to grow and make almost everything we eat and use. We’d have to stop using smartphones and computers and only use open source software. We avoid the openly/vocally supportive of LGBT causes like Target or of contraception like the Gates foundation, but many organic manufacturers, for instance, support feminism or contraception and even abortion or other women’s rights nonsense or new age practices, they’re just not being loud about it…. where to draw the line? That’s really up to individual consciences, that’s why we homeschool and form/inform our youth and teach them to do their research and help them make good choices. And maybe start their own pro marriage pro family pro life pro Catholic companies down the road…. 🙂 

I don’t mean to be cavalier about issues, but I found the conflicting reports on CFA funny. Everyone’s hating on them right now, but yesterday while I was driving I noticed their drive through line was as long as ever. You either like their chicken or you don’t.

Sooner or later we are all forced to choose what businesses to support just like companies are forced to choose the hills they will die on. I admire the companies that refuse to be manipulated by political agendas, but they’re getting few and far between. Instead of participating in the toxic atmosphere that permeates much of today’s public discourse, I’d much rather focus on concrete steps we can take as a community, starting with what’s true, good, and beautiful.