Chickens and Cookies and Gay Folks, Oh My...

After seeing countless posts all over the place about this, I finally decided to figure out what the hell all the fuss was about.
Seems that Chick-Fil-A has donated to a list of Christian organizations that either actively or subtly support traditional marriage. According to Huffington Post, these organizations are as follows:

- Marriage & Family Legacy Fund: $994,199
- Fellowship Of Christian Athletes: $480,000
- National Christian Foundation: $240,000
- Focus On The Family: $12,500
- Eagle Forum: $5,000
- Exodus International: $1,000
- Family Research Council: $1,000

They said I could be whatever I wanted, so I became FABULOUS!

When I try to look up these organizations, I'm met with a barrage of links with headlines screaming about things like the "anti-gay agenda", and so on. I've got to admit I'm a little bit puzzled. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes? How does that even factor in? Athletes? Really?

What troubles me is, quite simply, the rampant notion that being for something automatically makes you against someone. Or against a group of someones. The simplest way I can explain this is that I am for two parent households. I believe that they are statistically proven to be in the child's best interest, barring abuse or major parental discord. If I were to follow the same train of thought that's been applied to gay interests, I'd be saying that I'm against single parents, which couldn't be further from the truth. I've known some amazing single parents, and they work hard - twice as hard as non-single parents, and they are amazing, out of necessity. In life, sometimes the ideal doesn't happen. That's life. People leave, people die, people abuse people and drive people away. We play with the hand we're given.

Because the Christian faith has its own set of beliefs, and the gay community has another - obviously they don't agree. Being against gay marriage doesn't equal being against the people behind it, it just means that you disagree. Supporting one thing is not the same as attacking what it's at odds with. If that were true, military defending its own national borders would be equivalent to invading a foreign country. Defense of persons, places, or beliefs is not the same as attacking alternate beliefs.

In amongst all of this was Oreo's rainbow cookie, meant to support the LGBT community, and of course there were just as many fundamentalists who jumped to boycott that. Just like the supporters of gay marriage jumped on the bandwagon to boycott Chick-Fil-A. What's puzzling me there is that the ones boycotting Oreo are somehow cast as intolerant, while the ones boycotting Chick-Fil-A are seen as crusaders.

So my points are these:

1) In a capitalist marketplace, we can, to an extent, vote with our dollar. I fully understand that, and I would not, for instance, shop at a place that I knew supported Planned Parenthood - based on my personal beliefs. That's my right. And that's the right of every person who refuses to patronize Chick-Fil-A or to buy Oreos. 

However.

2) I wonder how much this affects the actual higher-ups in the company, or the company's net worth, when we're talking about monolithic corporations. Is it more likely that you passing on some chicken and fries, or a box of cookies, is really going to affect the 1 or 2 billion the company (or CEO) can donate or put toward public campaign, or is it more likely that the dent that may be made will simply cause the workers at the bottom to be filtered out, without the higher-ups feeling the pinch at all?

3) We don't get to decide what other people do with their money. As far as both of these "boycotts" are concerned, what's the desired outcome? That those in power recant their views? That they stop donating to organizations that matter to them? Are they wrong for thinking differently? Is that the problem? Because tolerance goes all ways, not just one.

Personally, I don't have solid beliefs on sexual orientation. I'm neutral. I don't have an issue with equal rights. I hate that because I'm not gung-ho supportive though... that I'm often seen as some sort of dissenter, or a homophobe, or a hater. No, people are people, and if I hate someone it's cause they suck, not because of their colour or sexual preference or religion. I hate that all the people preaching tolerance insist on using these terms that divide us. Gay, straight, black, white, religious, not... we're all people. Bottom line.

I can disagree with a person without losing respect for them, and surely without hating them. 

So I guess I just don't much see what all the commotion is about. Support a company or don't. Fight for your agenda or don't. Care about what you want to, or don't... who cares? Above all - have some tolerance. Everyone. Fight concepts, fight initiatives, fight ideas, don't fight people. Everyone has arrived at where they're at because of their own view of their existence, which is no less and no more than the sum of your own views. Don't like it, educate. Don't mud-sling. And accept that in life, nobody is ever going to agree with everyone all the time.