Conservatives against Capitalism & Freedom: Chick-Fil-A vs The Muppets

In case you’ve been living under a rock over the last week the president of the restaurant chain Chick-Fil-A came out with a statement that the chain supports the idea of  “traditional marriage“.   This was met by the expected reactions by liberals and those who support the LBGT community of condemnation and talks of boycotting the chain.  A quick side note, one thing that has always bugged me about Chick-Fil-A is that it’s pronounced chick filet, when clearly the way it’s written it should be pronounced chick fill uh, a much less sophisticated name.  This is not really all that newsworthy as these type of things seem to happen with some regularity and not all that unexpectedly from a restaurant chain primarily situated throughout the bible belt.

However what really kicked this whole thing up to another level was when the Jim Henson company came out against Chick-Fil-A and their bigoted stance.  That’s right, even the Muppets are against Chick-Fil-A, when you’ve lost the moral high ground to puppets you really are in a bad place.  There are of course now lots of protests and protest responses occurring, there is a national support day on August 1st and a corresponding same sex kiss day.

As Conservatives are always quick to point out, the restaurant is a private entity and has the absolute right to support financially or otherwise the anti-gay marriage agenda.  However what I find funny is how up in arms Conservatives get that people are exercising their right to protest this stance.  One of the primary conservative political planks is supposedly the support of freedom and capitalism.  Well, in a free capitalistic society people have the right to protest a company’s obvious bigotry by exercising their right to convince people not to spend money at that business.  Unfortunately what people on the edges of political belief, both left and right, always fail to recognize, is that your opposition has the same exact rights that you do.

To me the saddest thing about the anti-gay marriage stance, is that to any person of reasonable intelligence can see the direction all of this is heading.  Like the civil rights movement of the 1960′s the equality of marriage movement will culminate in all people in the United States having the right to marry the people they love.  Being against that says three things about you. 

First, you are mired in an outdated world view that no longer makes any sense.  The biblical arguments against same-sex marriage are ridiculous.  The way the bible guides the lives of Christians has and will always be re-interpreted into modern times, for example, we no longer stone people to death for working on the sabbath.  Essentially you will soon find yourself on the wrong side of history.

Second, you don’t have a basic understanding of history or culture and you certainly have not spent time with the people in the LGBT community.  Yes that’s right they are people, not Gays, or deviants or any other term you want to use to dehumanize them, they are just people just like you.

Third, at the absolute core of it all you are against love.  You are in opposition of the idea that two people have the right to express their love for each other in the same way you do.  Basically you are denying them freedom, the same freedom you wave as a flag, the same freedom found in the Constitution of the United States of America.  So at the end of the day, opposing Gay Marriage, is basically un-American.

Gay Marriage, Don’t be on the Wrong Side of History

Gay Marriage, Don’t be on the Wrong Side of History

Today, North Carolina became the 30^th state in the supposedly most exceptional and most free country in the world to ban marriage for same-sex partners.

The fact is that America has been here before; in the early 1960’s 41 states had laws banning marriage between races.  In 1967, 16 states still had these laws on the books.  I’m sure that the people in those former 41 states truly believed they were right and that God was on their side in prohibiting inter-racial marriage.  That in fact they were protecting traditional marriage as it was intended to be, that marriage should only be between two people of the same race as it would be unnatural for marriage to occur between races. 

Today, except for an attempt by a church in KY recently, people generally see the stupidity of the idea that two people of different races shouldn’t be allowed to be married.  Oh, I’m sure some racist bastards out there still believe this, but generally society has come to realize this prohibition was absurd.  Like people often say, hindsight is 20/20. 

My hope for you today is for you to realize that five, or ten, or twenty years from now people will think the same damn thing about the opposition to same-sex marriage and the ridiculous argument that gay marriage somehow threatens the validity of a marriage for heterosexual couples anywhere.  That somehow allowing same-sex couples to marry will lead to people marrying animals or inanimate objects, this is just ridiculous.  I don’t want you to have to lie in the future when your grandkids ask you what side of this issue you were on.  I want you to proudly look at them and say I supported gay marriage because it was the right thing to do, because two people who love each other should always have had that right.

I leave you with the words of Mildred Loving, the wife in the case that helped eradicate the idiocy, the injustice of the ban against interracial marriage.

“My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.”

“Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.”

“I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

Mildred Loving died in May of 2008.

Government using police to crack down on the Occupy movement

Over the weekend governments in several cities decided to crack down on the Occupy movement.  I’ve been hearing and reading lots of comments in the news about how it’s time this thing ended.  They made their point now it’s time for them to go home.  At Harvard the campus allows Harvard students to occupy a place on campus, but keeps gates closed to keep non-Harvard occupiers out, apparently we have elitists even within the 99%. 

In Berkeley, police decided to end the protest and proceed to stab protestors in the guts with batons the video at the following link is pretty brutal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSat-nRefXY

The government is scared and so now it will oppress and deny people their first amendment rights to protest.  The protest was acceptable and cute when it was in one park in New York.  Now that it has gone global and there are Occupy protests in many major US cities the government has called out the goon squads.  This does nothing but ramp up the violence, and although many people in the movement quote John Lennon on the mistake of using violence, at some point when the man is cracking your skull open, you’re going to swing back.

People are being injured, are being killed, an Iraq war veteran was shot in the head with a tear gas canister and then people who went to his aid were blasted with a flash grenade.  This is starting to seem like war.

As I watch all of this going down I wonder if this was what it was like watching the civil rights movement happen.  There are a lot of similarities, the mainstream media painting protestors as radicals, trouble makers, fringe elements without popular support.  Denying that the movement is active, or sizable or focused.  Every time they ramp up the oppression they make more people like me want to go out and join them.

Below is a link to an article about several of the crackdowns

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/13/us/occupy-movement/index.html