Double Down on Stupid

Assume for the sake of argument that he is right and that his hip and progressive constituents would never patronize a restaurant whose head was so terrible, the smartest thing he could do would be to encourage them to open a restaurant and gloat over the inevitable failure.  He won’t do that because he would have to eat a heaping helping of crow when he was proved wrong.  I’ve never eaten in a Chick-fil-A bu but I will now, first chance I get.

Same here. We’ve never eaten at a Chick-fil-A but we located the nearest one online and plan to have dinner there next week.

Even the ACLU agrees that this guy is reaching beyond his powers:

“The government can regulate discrimination in employment or against customers, but what the government cannot do is to punish someone for their words,” said Adam Schwartz, senior attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “When an alderman refuses to allow a business to open because its owner has expressed a viewpoint the government disagrees with, the government is practicing viewpoint discrimination.”

The ACLU “strongly supports” same-sex marriage, Schwartz said, but noted that if a government can exclude a business for being against same-sex marriage, it can also exclude a business for being in support of same-sex marriage.
“But we also support the First Amendment,” he said. “We don’ think the government should exclude Chick-fil-A because of the anti-LGBT message. We believe this is clear cut.”

DaveG and DougA—dittos—our local radio station was talking approvingly of Chick-fil-A today and folks were calling in very impressed and happy.

I think Chick-fil-A’s sales will skyrocket—and a further demonstration of the *reality* of non-cultural approval of special rights for one particular sexual orientation minority will occur, just as it did in North Carolina recently.

“But we also support the First Amendment,” he said. “We don’ think the government should exclude Chick-fil-A because of the anti-LGBT message

What anti-LGBTQXYZ message?  The man [Dan Cathy] has merely stated he runs his business by biblical principles and as someone who takes the bible seriously, he cannot be in favor of same-sex marriage or blessings.

I’ll bet he is against people robbing banks, no matter how great their attraction to the money in the banks.

Chick-fil-A’s stated customer service motto is to welcome everyone in their stores and to serve everyone [race, gender, gender preference, religion, background, etc] the same.

I would say that is a little “projection” on the part of the ACLU,,,,,,,,

My staff and I are heading to our local Chick-fil-A on Wednesday.  I’ve only eaten at one once, but it’ll be a regular stop from now on.

Next thing you know, the Alderman will ban all Chinese manufactured clothing and toys because China has unfair labor practices (I have no idea about the Chinese government stance on gay marriage), and next Christmas he will have a cold, nearly naked populace and no Santa.

Au contraire, tjmcmahon. I’m sure Moreno loves China, and fantasizes about having the kind of power that the Chinese government has.

Mark Steyn takes his rapier wit to Menino and Moreno:

Meanwhile, fellow mayor Tom Menino announced that Chick-fil-A would not be opening in his burg anytime soon. “If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult,” said His Honor. If you’ve just wandered in in the middle of the column, this guy Menino isn’t the mayor of Soviet Novosibirsk or Kampong Cham under the Khmer Rouge, but of Boston, Mass. Nevertheless, he shares the commissars’ view that in order to operate even a modest and politically inconsequential business it is necessary to demonstrate that one is in full ideological compliance with party orthodoxy. “There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail,” Mayor Menino thundered in his letter to Mr. Cathy, “and no place for your company alongside it.” No, sir. On Boston’s Freedom Trail, you’re free to march in ideological lockstep with the city authorities – or else. Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when Massachusetts was a beacon of liberty: the shot heard round the world, and all that. Now it fires Bureau of Compliance permit-rejection letters round the world.

Mayor Menino subsequently backed down and claimed the severed rooster’s head left in Mr. Cathy’s bed was all just a misunderstanding. Yet, when it comes to fighting homophobia on Boston’s Freedom Trail, His Honor is highly selective. As the Boston Herald’s Michael Graham pointed out, Menino is happy to hand out municipal licenses to groups whose most prominent figures call for gays to be put to death. The mayor couldn’t have been more accommodating (including giving them $1.8 million of municipal land) of the new mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston, whose IRS returns listed as one of their seven trustees Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Like President Obama, Imam Qaradawi’s position on gays is in a state of “evolution”: He can’t decide whether to burn them or toss ‘em off a cliff. “Some say we should throw them from a high place,” he told Al-Jazeera. “Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement ... . The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.” Unlike the deplorable Mr. Cathy, Imam Qaradawi is admirably open-minded: There are so many ways to kill homosexuals, why restrict yourself to just one? In Mayor Menino’s Boston, if you take the same view of marriage as President Obama did from 2009 to 2012, he’ll run your homophobic ass out of town. But, if you want to toss those godless sodomites off the John Hancock Tower, he’ll officiate at your ribbon-cutting ceremony.

this guy Menino isn’t the mayor of Soviet Novosibirsk or Kampong Cham under the Khmer Rouge

I think that Democratic Kampuchea’s few remaining chickens may have been protected by an Endangered Species Act.

Anyway, the Khmer Rouge did something to make sure their former owners couldn’t possibly eat them.

Apparently what we have here is a pretty severe mis-understanding of what the city’s role is in government.  By socialists who are taking themselves a bit too seriously.