The fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A has a long, well-known past of donating to anti-LGBTQ causes.
Several times in recent years, the organization has been called out and boycotted for its intolerance, in response to which the company has offered apologies and regrets over their past stances.
Now, however, reports have revealed that Chick-fil-A continued donating to anti-LGBTQ organizations and Rodney Bullard, the company's Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility, defended those donations, saying they were "relevant and impactful to the community."
Asked about the donations in a recent interview with Business Insider, Bullard responded:
"The calling for us is to ensure that we are relevant and impactful in the community, and that we're helping children and that we're helping them to be everything that they can be.
"For us, that's a much higher calling than any political or cultural war that's being waged. This is really about an authentic problem that is on the ground, that is present and ever present in the lives of many children who can't help themselves."
The implication of Bullard's statement is, of course, that in his mind, LGBTQ couples make worse parents than straight ones, despite the countless studies indicating this is not the case.
Bullard is also ignoring the fact that LGBTQ youth, who are also harmed by the company's desire to help youth, "LGBTQ youth are often disproportionately harmed by issues like homelessness, mental illness and poor education" according to Huffpost.
Much of this controversy re-ignited in March when ThinkProgress uncovered 2017 tax documents from the restaurant chain revealing it had made $1.8 million in donations to anti-LGBTQ organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, The Salvation Army and the Paul Anderson Youth Home.
The company also fails to include any protections from discrimination for LGBTQ employees in its policies and has consistently scored a "zero in the Human Rights Campaign's annual buyers guide."
In 2012, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy publicly spoke out against same-sex marriage. The resulting backlash forced the company to claim it would be a purely non-political organization in the future. The company's donations, however, reveal this to be untrue.
Many people online are calling for a continued boycott of the chicken restaurant.
Remember when you eat at Chick-fil-A , you may be giving your money to organizations that persecute LGBTQ teens and couples.
