...of the good and the Godly

The Chick-Fil-A foofaraw that unfolded upon our Great American Landscape over the past week has illustrated an unfortunate fact. In spite of all these hundreds of years of human growth and learning, bigotry remains a part of our nature… we’re still afraid of all those people not like us. Worse yet, we are willing to deny our fellow humans the same rights we enjoy.

Dan Cathy, CFA’s head honcho, ever so eloquently pointed this out for us in that unfortunate interview published by the Baptist Press. Cathy’s bigoted babbling is actually not anything rare in our modern discourse, but for some reason it ignited no less than a social media wildfire and prompted some of the more loud mouthed liberal politicians to hint at and openly threaten what would have been illegal restraints. Wingnut talking heads on the right smelled blood in the water and pounced.

Since the interview further details have emerged showing that Cathy puts CFA’s money where his bigoted mouth is by donating large sums of those good Christian greenbacks to recognized, overtly anti-gay hate groups, Groups such as Focus on the Family, Alliance Defense Fund, American Family Association and the Family Research Council received a total of $1.1 million out of the total $5 million dollar budget for CFA’s charitable arm, the WinShape foundation.

CFA patriarch and founder Truett Cathy is also the founder of the WinShape foundation. Reading the papers that formed the basis for WinShape’s original goals reveals a good man intent on helping children. If modern Christianity had not shifted so wildly toward hatred, fear and bigotry, WinShape might still be meeting those noble, early goals. Today, however, fully 20% of the foundation’s support goes to groups who would deny equal rights, all the while justifying the spreading of hatred, fear and bigotry as being “the Lord’s work.”

At any rate, the liberal backlash to Cathy’s ill-advised public comments spawned an overwhelming reaction from the so called conservative talking heads. Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Beck had a field day, of course, but it was those well known good Christians Rich Santorum and Mike Huckabee who took action.

The Huck and Frothy travelling minstrel show organized Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, and the next thing we see is bigots on parade. Here in Fort Worth the circus really is in town, but this was a circus of entirely different character.

The number of good Christians willing to stand in line and spend money in this organized display anti-gay bigotry was large and far too reminiscent of the 1950’s and 60’s. Sorry folks, but it disgusts me that so many in our supposedly free republic would so willingly… even joyfully… support the promotion of hate and the denial of rights for their own countrymen.

The fools call it love and compassion. To them they are behaving in a good, Godly manner. That is what their preachers tell them all the time, but this is far too reminiscent of another chapter in the progress of this nation where denying equal rights was considered to be the good, Godly and the right thing to do.

We’ve finally pretty much gotten past those days, but hells bells! Those damn liberals seem to recognize the similarities to the good old days of yore when white, Christian men made the rules, owned all the blacks, the women and the children… and for some reason those damn liberals decided to object to the foolishness embodied by Cathy’s statement.

Immediately across the right wing hate-o-sphere was heard the cry of censorship… people incited into street marches loudly shouting that Cathy has a right to voice his opinion, those damn liberals were violating the constitution in some fashion by denying Cathy his guaranteed right to say something stupid. The proposed boycott of CFA prompted the buycott in an effort to prevent those damn liberals from robbing this innocent man of his right to spew ignorant babble.

Something we should remember here is that the same people objecting to a CFA boycott have over the past weeks, months and years advocated boycotts of J.C. Penny, Starbucks, Ford Motors, Lowes Home Improvement, Best Buy, Disney, Target, Sesame Street, Ellen Degeneres, a Purple Dinosaur, a purple Telletubby, and Oreo Cookies… but there is certainly nothing hypocritical here… nothing at all.

So what we have in the end (assuming it has ended) is bigots blinded by ignorance lining up to buy chicken sandwiches in opposition to an imaginary threat and in support of behavior that most certainly isn’t good or “godly.” In my time I've been fortunate enough to know some good people who call themselves Christian. They are people who, in my mind, would be good even if the concept of Christ had never existed. They are just good people. Pompous fools like Santorum and Huckabee likely do not impress the truly good folk.

In all those photos of the long lines of CFA faux Christian supporters, many, maybe most of these good, godly people were like me in one respect – overweight. Some were grossly fat but perhaps I should be more generous and simply call them "well nourished."

I have to wonder if any of these people have ever volunteered to help at the food bank so that hungry people here in America might have the benefit of a little nutrition too. If not volunteering, have they at least donated to the food bank?

Have they ever contributed to any charity that might do some actual good in the world, or is standing up for misguided, Christian bigotry the only thing important to them... and buying a chicken sandwich the only contribution to anything they have ever made?  

I hope the waffle fries were good, but meanwhile, in other parts of the world…

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