A beef with the chicken

I guess I’m finally coming out from under the rock I’ve been hiding under now that the chaos of the Chick-Fil-A controversy calmed down a bit.
Does that make me a coward -- a chicken? Possibly, but I will go ahead and say, I’m Christian and I support gay marriage.
I was exposed to gay people from a very young age and never understood that there was ever supposed to be something ‘wrong’ with them. As I got older, many of my best friends came out to me and my view of them never changed. There was no reason for it to change. They haven’t turned into some mutant being just because they are attracted to their same sex.
Side note: I almost wrote my english honor’s thesis on the homosexual connotations of male bonding experiences. Examples included bromances and man-crushes, among others. There is a really fine line between what is considered gay related activity and ‘bros’ hanging out together. Just putting that out there.
When the Chick-Fil-A controversy hit facebook, I was constantly bombarded by both my gay friends and my straight friends posting articles that reflected their particular views. I hated that there had to be this definitive divide between my friends.
Comment wars would break out and I didn’t find myself educated enough on the issue to join in on the discussion in a productive manner. As a result, I ended up hiding most of my friends from my news feed just to get away from the non-sense.
My limited knowledge of the controversy was that Chick-Fil-A did not support gay marriage. Gay people and supporters of gay marriage started protesting against the popular southern style chicken sandwich dining establishment, vowing never to eat there again. I still think this protesting is ‘udder-ly’ ridiculous.
I’m not going to stop eating at Chick-Fil-A because I don’t really think that whole ‘take a pebble, move a mountain’ concept works with big corporations. Yes, I am upset that Chick-Fil-A chooses to use their profits to support Exodus International. But when we really look closely at where companies put our money after it leaves our hands, we probably wouldn’t be too happy.
I think I’m just going to go with the ‘ignorance is bliss’ mentality when it comes to Chick-Fil-A. I’m probably not going to eat there as often as I used to. In all honesty, I don’t eat there very often anyway. I usually just crave Chick-Fil-A on Sundays.
Chick-Fil-A making a statement about how they didn’t support gay marriage wasn’t a huge surprise. One of my friends whose father owns 2 Chick-Fil-A restaurants posted on facebook, “being surprised that Chick-Fil-A doesn’t support gay marriage is like being surprised that it gets hot during the summer.”
Chick-Fil-established themselves as a Christian corporation from the very beginning and I can’t hold that against them. They have a right to share their views, if asked, just like everyone else. However, once Christians everywhere flocked to the nearest Chick-Fil-A on the restaurant’s support day, I became disgusted with my fellow Christians.
Many were at the support day to show how much they abhorred the idea of gay marriage. Why must Christians, as a collective group, feel the need to give their blessing on all aspects of what other people are doing with their lives?
As a Christian, I do not believe that it is the Christian’s job to convert every non-Christian over to perceived Christian theology. The duty of the Christian is to show love to everyone. By showing this love, Christians then open up conversation to other cultures and allow for the acceptance of other ideas and the people attached to those ideas.
Telling the LGBT community that gay marriage is wrong, is wrong. The popular argument against gay marriage is that, according to the bible, marriage is sacred and should be between a man and a woman.
In our society, marriage is no longer something sacred. The divorce rate has skyrocketed. Some people go so far as to see how many ex-wives and ex-husbands they can collect in their lifetime. Marriage can also be a state of mind.
We all know at least one couple that acts like ‘an old married couple’ that isn’t married. There is nothing stopping a gay couple from acting as though they are married. But acting isn’t enough anymore. We live in a society where everyone wants to label everything. We want to make everything official. Who am I to stop them from getting married if that’s what makes them happy?
Happiness is all I want for my friends and family, including those who are gay. Most of the LGBT community aren’t Christians and some Christians may find that appalling, but there do exist other religious communities out there. Most of them are sitting back, watching Christians dig a bigger hole for themselves. Just because Christians disagr
ee with something doesn’t mean that it is universally disagreed with and vice versa. There are religious communities who don’t eat meat as part of their beliefs. They don’t believe people should eat meat, but they don’t go around converting other people to vegetarianism. Nor do they storm Chick-Fil-A telling them only to serve grilled cheese sandwiches and waffle fries. Christians, as a whole, should slow down with the bible thumping and take note of the accepting behaviors other communities exhibit. The world would be a better place for it.