Same-sex couples plan to boycott on Friday
Yesterday marked Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, all while the fast food company’s controversial stance on gay marriage continues to cause controversy. Mick Huckabeee, the former governor of Arkansas and Fox News host, said today that Chick-fil-A Appreication Day went beyond “anything I could have imagined” and that the store experienced “record, historic sales.” Huckabee also called the recent controversy over the company “economic bullying” as a way to put CEO Dan Cathy “out of business.”
“It was just getting out of hand,” Huckabee said.
Customers flocked to hundreds of local franchises Wednesday to show their support for Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.
Many protests have resulted as result of the Chick-fil-A controversy. Three days after Cathy made his statement, Chick-fil-A released a statement saying, “Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.” After Cathy told the Baptist Press his company supports “the biblical definition of the family unit,” many local mayors even threatened to keep the fast food restaurant out of their city and to not allow Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to occur in their city.
“It’s gone beyond anything I could have imagined,” Huckabee told Fox News in response to Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. “Every one of (the stores) that I know have reported record, historic sales yesterday. … A lot of the stores ran out of chicken before the end of the day.”
Critics of Chick-fil-A argue that the company’s opposition to gay marriage and lifestyle go above and beyond Cathy’s statements to the press. Over the year, the company has donated millions of dollars to organizations that lobby against same-sex marriage legalization. Still, Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day brought out long-time customers, as well as protestors.
Gay-rights sympathizers have planned to protest yesterday’s Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day by gathering on Friday outside Chick-fil-A locations for National Same-Sex Kiss Day, where they plan to publicly embrace in an effort to draw attention to the company’s donations to anti-gay-marriage groups.
