The Back Alley Archives

I love Chick-Fil-A's food. It's my go-to fast food restaurant.

I don't really give a shit about gay marriage, so I'll keep eating there.

But for those of you who do give a shit, you can still eat delicious Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and assuage your conscience by purchasing Chicken Offsets!

Hi! I'm Ted Frank and I love the chicken sandwiches at Chick-fil-A. But I also like my gay-married friends and don't like the guilt of indirectly supporting Chick-fil-A's stance on gay rights. And I know there are lots of other people in the same boat. So I've started ChickenOffset.com. Every time you buy a chicken-sandwich meal at Chick-fil-A, you can buy an "offset" here. You can print out the receipt and demonstrate to your friends that the money you gave for LGBT youth more than compensates for the profits you put in Chick-fil-A's coffers. $1 gets you 1 chicken-meal offset; $6 for ten offsets. We promise to send at least 90% of the proceeds (and will almost certainly send more than that) after our minimal expenses to It Gets Better and the Williams Institute. We promise your offsets will provide far more money to non-profits that support gays than buying a sandwich at Chick-fil-A ends up putting in the pockets of anti-gay-rights organizations. We promise to update this site with data about how much money has been donated.

If you'd rather give money directly to gay-rights organizations without an offset or middleman or chicken sandwich, might I suggest Freedom to Marry? Campaign-finance law means that we will be giving our money to a 501(c)(3) organization to avoid losing money from taxes, but you're not so limited.

Chicken Offset is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially or unofficially connected with Chick-fil-A, any Chick-fil-A owner-operators, the Cathy family, It Gets Better, the Williams Institute, or Freedom to Marry.

Wow, now you can spend for your gay guilt. amazing.

You don't give a shit about equal rights Doc? I really could care less about Chick Fil A, it wasn't the company but it's CEO that spoke out against gay marriage. That being said, I'm trying to stop eating any fast food if I can, although it is difficult with my work schedule sometimes.

Eh, the CEO didn't really "speak out" against gay marriage. Some Baptist organization interviewed him about various things, and he said something about supporting the traditional "Biblical" marriage stance. Here is the actual article that started the current media firestorm. However, I think the "traditional Biblical" definition of marriage, in Cathy's eyes, probably does not include gay marriage, and Chick-Fil-A does have a record of donating money to various religious groups who oppose gay marriage.

For what it's worth, when I was a teenager, I worked for the Chick-Fil-A in the Regency Square Mall. I never got any religious messages from the franchise owners or saw anything from the home office advocating for any religious belief.

But, to answer your question: I don't think the government should be involved in marriage at all. It's primarily a religious institution, and is a throwback to the days when the church played a role in government. As a nominally secular nation, I just don't see how it's the government's business.

Which brings me to the point of the whole "gay marriage" debate: it's all about the money. Marriage carries with it certain benefits, from the government and from employers. Nothing is stopping gay people from getting married in the religious or contractual sense - it's only the official government recognition they want. Why? To get some of those sweet sweet government and health care dollars. It's a money grab by another special interest, cloaked in a debate about "equality."

And that's the reason I don't care about it. They're not being denied a fundamental right, like black people were. Gays are free to be gay, speak and associate freely, carry arms, vote, etc. etc. etc. The only inequality is about the benefits - just one more set of hands reaching for their share.

Is that a good enough reason for me to stop eating Chick-Fil-A? Hell no!

Agreed, it is about money and benefits but why should be government be allowed to say who can and can't be married? IMO, it is equality if my two friends can't get married just because they are both dudes. They should be able to join one or the others benefits for work if necessary.

I get it. The government should treat everyone equally, but I have trouble getting worked up over this issue.

Well, in one sense, they have the same rights as anyone else. A gay man can't marry another man, and neither can a straight man. They have the same right to marry or not marry a woman (all this depending upon which state you live in.)

But let me tell you my stance so you don't get confused. My personal religious belief is that it is wrong. But, we live in America and my political belief is that I won't stand in anyone's way to marry another person. Just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I think it should be illegal, unless of course it denies someone of their life, liberty, or property. I'm not going to ever stand up for it, but if it comes to a vote in my state, I won't vote against it.

While we're talking about teh gays, I gotta tell you, I come pretty firmly down on the side of gayness being hard-wired. I knew a gay guy in law school who put it something like this: "Why would I 'choose' to be gay? Why would I choose to get bullied, harassed, made fun of and beaten up, just so I could have sex with a man?" That kind of spoke to me - that is, I didn't "choose" to be heterosexual any more than he "chose" to be gay.

Why would God condemn what He made? It doesn't make sense to me.

Here's my theory: Until they can find a genetic cause, I don't think that's the culprit. But I do think that hormonal changes/imbalances during development could cause someone's brain to be hardwired that way. Not that it is any way preventable, but still not a genetic trait.

^ That's a plausible theory.

Just ate lunch at Chick-fil-A. Two gay young men ate at a booth near us. The obviously didn't get the memo.

Also, on the subject of choice/versus hardwired, I do have to state that of the three gay people I know personally, two had issues with their Father. I don't know about the other. I know that is anecdotal evidence, but it just seems to fit in some cases.