Chick-Fil-A Ends Donations To Anti-LGBTQ Groups

After years of facing backlash due to their donations to anti-LGBTQ organizations, Chick-fil-A has announced it will no longer be funding such charities

For several years fast food chicken purveyor Chick-fil-A has faced major public backlash and scrutiny, due to the fact that they financially support organizations who have spoken out against homosexuality and same sex marriage. However, on Monday, Chick-fil-A announced that starting in 2020, the group of charities that it will donate to won’t include anti-LGBTQ groups, namely the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA).

The two groups formally received a hefty amount of money from the fast food chain in years past. In 2018, the Chick-fil-A foundation donated $1.65 million to the FCA and $115,000 to The Salvation Army.

Both groups have very clearly expressed their non-support of the LGBTQ community. The FCA clearly states in its application for employment that “neither heterosexual sex outside of marriage nor any homosexual act constitute an alternative lifestyle acceptable to God.” On its website, the group also specifies that “marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman.”

As for The Salvation Army, they claim they are not anti-LGBTQ and that their services are open to all people. However, past comments from the charity have not been quite so supportive of the group.

Chick-fil-A will now focus its charitable efforts supporting education through Junior Achievement USA, homelessness via Covenant House International, and hunger, by donating $25,000 to local food banks. “No organization will be excluded from future consideration — faith-based or non-faith-based,” Tim Tassopoulos, president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A said in a statement.

In the past, it hasn’t been just Chick-fil-A’s monetary donations to anti-LGBTQ groups that has raised eyebrows. The outwardly Christian company’s employees and executives have made questionable comments over the years. For example, in 2012 CEO Dan Cathy made it very clear that the company supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.” In a 2018 interview, he told a local Atlanta TV station that while he was against same-sex marriage, he was not “anti-gay.”

GLAAD isn’t very confident that Chick-fil-A has turned over a new leaf just because of today’s move. They warned that customers and employees should “greet today’s announcement with cautious optimism.”

“In addition to refraining from financially supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations, Chick-fil-A still lacks policies to ensure safe workplaces for LGBTQ employees and should unequivocally speak out against the anti-LGBTQ reputation that their brand represents,” Drew Anderson, GLAAD’s director of campaigns and rapid response explained via the Advocate.

Some people, from both sides of the spectrum believe that Chick-fil-A’s move might be financially motivated, as they want to recover some of their customer base who is boycotting them.

The takeaway here isn’t that the world should applaud Chick-fil-A for taking action on something that never should’ve been a thing in the first place — it should be that protesting and using your wallet to take a stand works.