The famous fast-food chain Chick-fil-A is now doing more to save the environment than your average leftist.
Earlier this week, Darling Ingredients Inc., a company that turns food waste into sustainable products, announced they’d been selected to convert used cooking oil from all Chick-fil-A locations in the U.S. and Canada into renewable transportation fuel. According to the news release, Darling’s Executive Vice President of Renewables and U.S. Specialty Operations Sandra Dudley said, “We admire Chick-fil-A’s commitment to reducing food waste and are proud to be part of a solution that keeps food waste out of our landfills while delivering a renewable fuel that reduces [greenhouse gas] emissions.”
The announcement also quoted Chick-fil-A Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility Rodney Bullard, who said, “At Chick-fil-A, we are committed to caring – and that includes caring for others through our food and caring for our planet.”
“Our innovative partnership with DAR PRO Solutions helps us be responsible stewards of the resources at our restaurants and allows us to support the future of renewable transportation fuel – all while positively influencing the communities we serve,” Bullard added.
Chick-fil-A, a family-owned company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, currently operates over 2,700 restaurants in the U.S. and Canada.
This is quite the announcement from a company the left loves to hate.
The wildly popular restaurant chain first came under attack by social justice warriors in 2012, when CEO Dan Cathy expressed his fierce opposition to same-sex marriage.
The assault against the company intensified in 2019 with the rise of the LGBTQ movement. Chick-fil-A was criticized because of the WinShape Foundation’s donations to organizations that opposed gay marriage, such as The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, according to a CNBC report.
The WinShape Foundation is a charitable organization established by Chick-fil-A’s founder, Truett Kathy, in 1984.
The award-winning company that had been named “The Most Respected Quick-Service Brand” and “Best Brand for Overall Experience” in QSR’s 2019 Reader’s Choice Awards and designated the top fast-food restaurant in Newsweek’s 2019 America’s Best Customer Service report suddenly found itself a target of the LGBTQ community and their supporters.
(Note: A viral internet meme attached new meaning to those letters last week; Let’s Get Biden to Quit. But I digress.)
Stories about boycotts and sit-ins at Chick-fil-A restaurants became a common occurrence.
At the time, RedState’s Mike Ford wrote that activists had “bullied local authorities into denying permits or location access for new restaurants. One case in point is the San Antonio Airport Authority refusing to allow a Chick-fil-A store in its retail area. Even some colleges, like Rider University in New Jersey, have banned the restaurant from the campus.”
In March 2019, The Daily Beast published an article entitled “Why Chick-fil-A Still Hurts: Queer Trauma in the Age of Trump.” Its sub-headline says, “The famous fried-chicken company may have cleaned up its act, but old homophobic demons don’t die so easily. It still smarts to see friends patronizing my former oppressor.”
This piece perfectly illustrates what was going on in the minds of the far-left at the time. The author, Jay Michaelson, was angry because, “in an impressive act of chutzpah,” Chick-fil-A had just opened a new restaurant “in one of New York’s longstanding LGBT neighborhoods: Park Slope, Brooklyn.”
He concedes that it is “closer to the jock mecca of Barclay’s Center than it is to the legendary lesbian hangout Ginger’s Bar” and that the WinShape Foundation has stopped supporting most of their “anti-LGBT causes,” yet he asks if that’s enough. “Should queer folks and our allies forgive and forget?”
He tells readers, “maybe it takes awhile for homophobia’s wounds to heal. And maybe that’s what this issue is really about: the enduring power of trauma in an age of renewed anxiety.”
You get the gist of it.
At any rate, this supposedly hateful, bigoted, racist company will now be doing more to save the environment than every ponytailed Subaru driver with a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker.
What are we hearing from our progressive friends? Are they impressed by Chick-fil-A’s latest initiative? It doesn’t appear so.
The deal was announced on Monday and, with the exception of a few trade organizations, there’s no mention of the story in the media.
I guess Michaelson is right. It takes time for homophobia’s wounds to heal.
