Chick-fil-A banned from airport over alleged 'legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior'
The San Antonio City Council has rejected the inclusion of Chick-fil-A from the new Food, Beverage and Retail Prime Concession Agreement for the San Antonio International Airport. The city has banned the chicken chain from setting up shop in the airport due to the company's alleged 'legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior.' In a statement, a rep for Chick-fil-A said they would 'still welcome the opportunity to have a thoughtful dialogue with the city council.'
Some faculty and students California Polytechnic State University and Trinity University apparently don’t want to "eat mor chikin" and are pushing for the removal of Chick-fil-A locations from their respective college campuses regarding the company’s alleged "anti-LGBTQ" views. In the last six months, the fast food chain was barred from opening up shop at one New Jersey university and two airports over similar concerns regarding the LGBTQ community.
On May 7, faculty members of Cal Poly's Academic Senate “overwhelmingly” voted to boot Chick-fil-A from the San Luis Obispo school, The Tribune reports.
"[Cal Poly's] values statement includes language that identifies LGBTQ as a classification of individuals that we want to embrace in our diversity and inclusion model,” senate vice-chair Thomas Gutierrez said of the initiative. "Then you have an organization that regularly and publicly shows up in the national news in great tension with this...so if you have a mission statement that indicates that you value inclusivity and diversity, then you should be making your business decisions based on that."
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In response, university spokesman Matt Lazier said that to oust Chick-fil-A “would be its own form of censorship and intolerance.” As per the Tribune, the fast food chain “won’t likely close soon.”
“While university administration passionately disagrees with the values of some of the organizations the president of Chick-fil-A has chosen to make personal donations to, we do not believe in responding to intolerance with intolerance,” Lazier told the Tribune of the faculty vote. “Inclusion means upholding the rights of others to have different perspectives and ensuring there is space in our community for differing viewpoints and ideologies, even those that may be in direct conflict with our own.”
Likewise, on May 8, reps for the Student Government Associationat Trinity University voted to kick the chicken-centric chain out of the college’s food court, KSAT reports.
Student senator Claire Carlson cited the company's million-dollar donations to anti-LGBTQ organizations and CEO Dan Cathy's previous "problematic" comments on same-sex marriage as fair grounds for the measure.
“Obviously [Chick-fil-A] has the potential to make a lot of people feel uncomfortable on campus, and also it looks really bad for Trinity in the context of recruiting potential students who may be a part of the LGBTQ community,” Carlson told school newspaper the Trinitonian of the fast food chain’s presence at the school, in a larger sense.
Moving forward, it remains to be determined how officials with the San Antonio college will respond to the student government’s campaign, as per KSAT.
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Reps for Chick-fil-A did not immediately return Fox News’ request on the news regarding the votes that could potentially lead to the closure of the fast food chain’s locations at Cal Poly and Trinity University.
In similar headlines, in March, the chicken-centric chain was banned from opening up shop in both San Antonio International Airport and Buffalo Niagara International Airport earlier this year over the company’s “legacy” and “rhetoric” of anti-LGBTQ views.
That same month, Think Progress published tax documents revealing that in 2017, the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave over $1.8 million in charitable donations to some organizations that have come under scrutiny regarding their stance on LGBTQ issues.
Over $1.65 million of that contribution was given to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which writes in an online “Statement of Faith” that it believes “marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman,” and believes “sexual intimacy” should only be expressed “within [that] context,” CBS News reports.
When contacted for comment, reps for Chick-fil-A told Fox News that the San Antonio airport ban was "the first we heard” of the protest and its approval by the city council.
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“We would still welcome the opportunity to have a thoughtful dialogue with the city council and plan to reach out to them. It’s unfortunate that mischaracterizations of our brand have led to decisions like this,” a spokesperson said.
According to New York Upstate, the Texas attorney general has since opened an investigation regarding whether the city of San Antonio “violated Chick-fil-A’s religious liberty” in their controversial decision.
At the time, reps for the company did not return Fox News’ request for comment on news of the Buffalo airport ban.
Likewise, in November 2018, Rider University made headlines for turning down a student body survey that voted to bring Chick-fil-A to campus as a new fast-food option, citing concerns over the company’s attitudes toward the LGBTQ community.
The chain pushed back against the university's characterization, saying the restaurant is merely providing food and doesn't have any agenda.