This Connecticut McDonald’s Just Savagely Shaded Its Neighboring Chick-Fil-A, and We’re Lovin’ It
Everyone knows that Chick-fil-A is anti-LGBTQ. The Christian-founded fast-food chain known for chicken sandwiches and billboards of half-literate cows encouraging folks to “EAT MOR CHIKIN” chicken has a long history of donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-LGBTQ organizations, a history which continues to 2015 at least. So LGBTQ people are loving a recent image showing a McDonald’s sign right next door to a newly opening Chick-fil-A in Glastonbury, Connecticut. The sign at the McDonald’s reads, “We welcome everyone.” Is this some McDonald’s Chick-fil-A shade? If so, we’re lovin’ it.
Susan Lafleur, the manager of the McDonald’s, said the sign wasn’t a jab at Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBTQ political stances. “[The sign] just means that everyone is welcome, young, old, everyone,” Lafleur said.
In response, the owner of the Glastonbury Chick-fil-A franchise, which is set to open on July 26, said his restaurant has a “diverse workplace of individuals who represent many viewpoints, opinions, backgrounds and beliefs.”
That’s nice, but his restaurant is still very anti-LGBTQ.
A short history of Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBTQ politics
Chick-fil-A Foundation’s most recent IRS filings from 2015 reveal hundreds of thousands in donations to anti-LGBTQ groups. They gave $1 million to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a religious organization with “a strict ‘sexual purity’ policy, prohibiting any ‘homosexual acts.’”
They also donated $200,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, a Georgia-based group that runs a “Christian residential home for troubled youth.” The organization believes that the “sexual, physical and mental abuse of children” resulted in “the explosion of homosexuality in the last century.”
They also gave $130,000 to the Salvation Army, a religious international charity which long opposed same-sex marriage, allegedly practiced anti-LGBTQ housing discrimination and supports religious exemptions from laws forbidding anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
From 2003 to 2008 Chick-fil-A’s charitable arm (the WinShape Foundation) donated more than $1.1 million to anti-LGBT groups. In 2009 they about doubled that amount to $2 million. During that time, they donated millions of dollars to anti-LGBTQ groups (including ones that want to criminalize and deport gay “pedophiles”).
In 2012, after Chick-fil-A executives promised to stop supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations, the company’s now-deceased founder S. Truett Cathy continued to show his support to anti-LGBTQ groups and later stated that the company had never agreed to end its anti-LGBTQ funding at all.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the McDonald’s restaurant was the new fast food restaurant opening in Glastonbury.
