The president of Chick-Fil-A said on a radio show that he was against gay “marriage.” Insert lunacy here.
Headlines screaming “Anti-gay!!!” and “Homophobe!!!”
Actor Ed Helms from “The Office” and “The Hangover” tweeted yesterday that Chick-Fil-A “Lost a loyal fan” because of the company’s stance.
And luminaries such as Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian – have also called for a Chick-fil-A boycott.
So go eat at Chick-Fil-A. By eating their great sandwiches and chowing down their waffle fries and feel good about yourself that you’re supporting marriage. And you get the extra benefit of knowing you won’t run into Lindsey Lohan or Miley Cyrus while you’re there.
Here’s the original report from Yahoo:
Dan Cathy, the president and chief operating officer of popular fast food chain Chick-fil-A, said in a radio interview this week that legalizing same-sex marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”
Appearing on “The Ken Coleman Show,” Cathy spoke of his company’s pride in its socially conservative character, but then offered an assessment of same-sex marriage that might lose the chain a few customers.
“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’” said Cathy.
“I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about,” he added.
The Huffington Post reports that in 2010 Chick-fil-A, through its WinShape Foundation, donated approximately $2 million to groups that oppose same-sex marriage, most notably giving $1,188,380 to the Marriage & Family Foundation. In 2009 the company also reportedly donated $2 million to such groups.
July 20, 2012 at 5:06 am
Sandra:
Your question is welcome.
The problem is that certain ideas are so long-dead in popular culture that the vocabulary to discuss them barely remains in our language. It takes significant effort to lay the conceptual groundwork.
Where to begin?
God created the world and "it was good." This includes the design of our physical forms — no Gnosticism for the Jew (or for that matter the consistent thinker); matter is good, and the design of creation is good.
That includes the design of pleasure. Ever wonder what pleasure is for?
Pleasure, generally, is God's reward for our doing what is good, and His fall-back for keeping the species going in a rough-and-ready way when our fallenness gets the better of us as it so often does.
After all, we're not "Vulcans." We don't know everything, and even if we knew everything we wouldn't have the cerebral processing-power or flawless logic to figure out what was right all the time, and even if we did we wouldn't do it half the time anyway.
But by making eating pleasurable and resisting the need to eat difficult, God makes certain that even fallen humans will keep their bodies fed. He needn't rely on our knowing when we need it out of perfect calculation; our instincts and pleasures will remind us. Unfallen humanity wouldn't need this and would have pleasure merely as a bonus in an already perfect and deathless world; but fallen humanity needs it.
Now, notice that pleasures are specific to the goods they're intended to provoke us towards. You don't get hungry for lack of breathing. You don't get thirsty for lack of body heat.
And notice that, because we are fallen, our pleasures and instincts can become corrupted from their original intent…but that this doesn't prevent us knowing what their original purpose was, nonetheless. Glue-sniffers and people who practice autoerotic asphyxiation mess with breathing and flirt with hypoxia and brain-damage as a result; but we know what breathing is actually for. People overeat when their bodies are already stuffed, or eat junk food when their bodies need healthy food, or eat and then vomit to prevent weight-gain (bulimia), and some people even suffer from a disorder called pica that makes them crave eating non-food materials (sheetrock, dirt, nails). But we know that eating is to provide the body with energy and materials for its repair, just the same.
…continued…
July 20, 2012 at 5:07 am
…continuing…
Notice furthermore that when we are not caught in the grips of a disordered appetite (addiction to glue-sniffing or overeating, or pica or bulimia) we look with a certain distaste or horror at it. We notice the disconnect between the proper functioning of the relevant instinct and the misuse of it. We even make distinctions between pleasure rightly obtained (like a healthy meal after hard physical work) and wrongly obtained (a sumptuous desert eaten and then vomited to maintain a healthy figure, or a snort of cocaine to obtain pleasure instead of having pleasure in living).
From all of this we can conclude that, while it is perfectly healthy and laudatory to obtain pleasure in an instinctually-driven act (eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, whatever) so long as that pleasure is attached to the natural and good intended outcome of that act (nutrition, hydration, oxygenation, rest), it is disordered — bad for us and maybe bad in other ways also — to obtain pleasure in a way that perverts the pleasure and instinct away from its intended good. That is to say: You can use sleep for rest; you may not use it to avoid life's problems. You can use breathing for oxygenation, but not for getting high on glue fumes. You can use eating for nutrition, but it's disordered to gorge-and-purge or to eat sheetrock.
So every pleasure has a natural end, or "telos," towards which it is ordered. One can pursue that telos and justly obtain the attendant pleasure, without sin. Or, one can abstain from that telos in favor of spending one's time in other pursuits, and not sin.
But if you rip the pleasure away from its intended endpoint or goal, or twist the instinct so that it drives you towards a different goal, then the pleasure or instinct has become perverted or disordered, and is (if you are helpless to prevent it) a cross to bear, or (if you willfully twisted it away from its telos through your own actions) a sin.
Ruminate on all that for a while. Realize that it was a solid strand of human understanding in the wiser traditions of most cultures for most of human history (although it was occasionally ignored or forgotten at the high-water-marks of wealth in various civilizations, which usually fell not too long thereafter). This is not abstract weird philosophy, it is fundamental humanism in the sense of being humane, in the sense of not being dehumanizing.
…continued…
July 20, 2012 at 5:08 am
…continuing…
Steep yourself in that point-of-view for a while — long enough to overcome our culture's total forgetfulness of it — and then apply these concepts to human sexuality, and see what you find:
There is a strong sexual instinct, and sex is very pleasurable. But we know (from our experience with other instincts and pleasures) that the sex instinct and pleasure have a telos, an intended end.
Well, one part of that telos is pretty obvious: Baby-making. This perpetuates the species; and, through revelation, we discover it's even more important than that: It provides a way for us to cooperate with God in the creation of human beings with immortal souls who will outlive our dying physical universe, populating Heaven and rising on the last day. (Not a small thing, that.)
But we also can look at the particular design of the sexual instinct and the sexual act, and learn more. It is not just about baby-making, but about creating neurochemical reactions in both male and female (through orgasm and pheromones and the neurotransmitters delivered by semen and skin-to-skin contact during coitus) which produce emotional bonding and an inclination for cooperation, and to miss one another. In short: Human sexuality doesn't just make babies, it makes long-term families to promote the healthy rearing of those children, and even the grandchildren.
So that is the telos of human sexuality: Not just to produce new humans, but to raise them in intact families for maximum success.
(And as we know through revelation, to mirror the divine marriage of Christ and the Church — always unreservedly giving, life-giving, fruitful, and holding nothing back.)
Take all that, and then ask yourself: Whither homosexuality? Whither divorce? Whither artificial contraception, whether by condoms or by hormones?
If the wisdom of the ages is correct — and if our instincts do not mislead us when we judge certain uses of eating or sleeping or breathing or drinking to be disordered or horrifying — then any act which obtains instinctual release and pleasure in a fashion separated from the healthy telos towards which that instinct and pleasure is directed is wrong. If we can't help it (as in the case of folks who suffer from pica or from homosexual temptations) then it is a cross to bear, but one which may be borne for the benefit of souls and the glory of God. And if we intentionally act to separate pleasure from its intended end, then we are not guiltless, but are abusing our own bodies and corrupting our own souls.
That's the deal.
Sorry for the long reply.
But as I said, our culture is fundamentally ignorant about this kind of thing, more so than many (perhaps most) cultures have been in many other ages (perhaps most).
So if one is not satisfied with half-explanations, then the full explanation is required.
Sincerely,
R.C.
July 21, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Eat more chicken, MOOO!
July 22, 2012 at 6:32 pm
RC
That explanation is beautiful. Everybody wants to be beautiful. I Hope.
July 22, 2012 at 11:17 pm
A fake husband and a phoney wife is a lie and perjury in a court of law. To legalize lying in a court of law will leave our society without a shred of trust in any contract. Without the truth being a necessary part of being human what crook could be prosecuted?
Sandra Kohlmann sees no harm in keeping lies in our culture, supporting lies with our tax dollars. Sandra Kohlmann thinks it is OK for somebody to sell a piece of property to you, a piece of property they do not own, because lying to you is OK in a court of law.
July 22, 2012 at 11:23 pm
How much do you think I might get for that bridge in Brooklyn, NY? Dan Cathy, Sandra Kohlmann says it is OK to sell bridges in Brooklyn if the boycot takes you out.
If Chick-Fil-A goes belly-up, you could sell bridges and property you do not own because lying is in chic. Small lies and big lies