Chick-fil-A has been on the opposing side of the gay community ever since it was revealed years ago that CEO Dan Cathy has been funding anti-marriage equality initiatives and anti-gay groups. However, in recent times Chick-fil-A has been working on improving their relationship with the LGBT community and the Hollywood location of the chicken franchise recently held a gay youth event.
According to NewNowNext, Jeremiah Cillpam, owner of a Chick-fil-A franchise on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, partnered with the national gay-youth group Campus Pride to host a fundraiser to raise money to fight bullying. An unspecified percentage of the sales went to an Campus Pride’s efforts to match an anonymous $10,000 matching grant.
However, the fundraiser wasn’t without some controversy. Last year, Campus Pride director Shane Windmeyer met with Cathy several times and claimed that both men “had expanded his world without abandoning it.”
But many gay activists denied that Cathy had changed and had ceased funding money to anti-gay groups. And they argued that up to 70 percent of the LGBT community was still boycotting Chick-fil-A.
However, Windmeyer spoke with Frontiers L.A. about the controversy and explained that he felt no shame about partnering with Chick-fil-A to get the job done when it comes to bettering the lives of LGBT people.
“We’re not going to turn away anyone who wants to be an ally and help us fundraise. Activism is dirty work. It’s work that some people don’t always agree on the journey or the past and today we were just trying to be positive, to move forward and to do things that are common ground issues,” said Windmeyer.
Well, they say money makes for strange bedfellows and clearly this is one of those situations where a mutual desire for money brought two opposing sides together. –nicholas robinson
