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From @DuplexFields, in a thread about erasure of right-coded identities:
Huh. I remember hearing that conversation years ago. It probably just said "gay" instead of LGBT, but other than that it was basically identical.
At the time, Chick-fil-A's charitable arm had been in the news for anti-gay activism. The specific complaints I recall were funding conversion therapy and supporting Uganda's rising restriction of gay rights. Some quick Googling suggests these would have been Exodus International and the Family Research Council. There's a pretty unambiguous motte in which
Chick-fil-A donates money to WinShape Foundation
Winshape donates lots of that money to Exodus/FRC
Exodus endorses conversion therapy, including prominent support for Uganda
FRC lobbies (for weaker language, not against?) the US resolution condemning Uganda's bill
Uganda continues to debate assigning the death penalty to homosexuality
Naturally, by the time any of this was hitting the broader news, it was a messy conflation. The bailey, intentional or otherwise, was more akin to
Chick-fil-A donates money to evangelists and conversion therapists
Evangelists run missions in Uganda
Therefore Chick-fil-A evangelists must be running conversion therapy in Uganda
Uganda considered the death penalty for homosexuality
Therefore Chick-fil-A endorses literal genocide
And that was the state of Chick-fil-A criticism in Texas circa 2012.
By 2014, the bill had been amended to life-in-prison, passed, and overturned on procedural grounds. Exodus International had walked back their stance on conversion therapy and then also imploded. The FRC had been targeted by an incompetent gunman who intended to "to kill as many people as I could ... then smear a Chicken-fil-A [sic] sandwich on their face" in protest of Chick-fil-A's donations. This didn't seem to affect their continued domestic lobbying, including hiring rising star Josh Duggar.
It's hard to imagine this drama as anything other than dead and buried. Chick-fil-A hasn't funded these groups for a decade now, sticking to safer investments in summer camps and youth leadership. Unless I've missed some fresh drama, that conversation is a prime example of tribal signaling rather than an object-level stance, a good reason to be frustrated with the state of identity politics.
It's the end result of a cultural game of telephone, fossilized by sheer memetic fitness and alignment with the Current Thing.
I mean you're right, it's just signalling. I'd bet those people who said they'd never eat at Chik-fil-A are lying or simply don't like it and happen to be telling the truth for that reason. I've seen numerous woke people just give up caring when it comes to boycotting anything they like. Sure, Chick-fil-A and In & Out* are "piece of shit" companies but they still order it anyway they just make sure to let you know that it's wrong to do it. It's also possible there are people taking a principled stand that just don't talk about it but every single person I've met, or seen online, who's talked about this issue (and recently, too) has admitted that Chick-fil-A is a bad or piece of shit company and then still bought Chick-fil-A.
People I've seen, for the most part, have no idea about the object-level reasons why someone or something is bad. It's the same for anything political, really. They get given a vague idea by someone else who summed it up and their mind is made up. JK Rowling might be a perfect example of most of these people being the most informed about the reason why they're supposed to hate, but I bet none of them know what she's actually said. They just know that she's anti-trans. But they'll still see the next Fantastic Beasts movie and buy the next Harry Potter game.
I will admit this is stronger on the left side of things. The not knowing part, but I wonder if that's partly because of their cultural dominance and maybe the fact that right side people maybe feel like they need to look everything up several times to verify it because they don't trust a left source which would be most of them. And part of the cultural dominance is keeping the signals straight and in line with each other. On Reddit right now there were about four or five coordinated stories about Jordan Peterson crying about being called an incel by Olivia Wilde. But actually he cried for incels in general but nobody read the actual article or the video it was about. Most people repeated things about him that were patently false to signal to everyone that they know he's bad news. I bet they believe it. Once it's about politics/culture war information becomes useless. It's shocking to me how cavalier people are with their hatred.
*I'm not sure that In & Out has even done the getting sullied with a game of telephone thing, but simply being openly Christian is mostly enough and the rest is filled in with whatever their head made up, incidentally this is why Chris Pratt is a "piece of shit". I've heard this about him several times. But I bet you they still see the next Chris Pratt movie and then make a big point to complain about him when they don't even know what he's bad for except that he's Christian and/or Republican.
I have been a little disappointed in the anti-Rowling hypocrisy I see. I remember one thing that rubbed me the wrong way a while back. I was at a Ren Faire, and one of the performers made a "You're a wizard, Harry" joke and immediately followed it up with something along the lines of "Don't worry folks, that's only time we'll mention that TERF shit."
Like, either own the fact that you're making a Harry Potter joke or don't make one at all. Making the joke, and then virtue signaling that you shouldn't have made it and won't make one again seems like trying to eat your cake and have it too.
I've actually read Rowling's essay and tweets, and while I disagree with much of what she says, I can at least understand the emotional place she's coming from as a victim of abuse at the hands of a man. I'm not thrilled about the effect she's having on the conversation about trans people in Britain, but I haven't made the decision to boycott her.
Practically, I couldn't really "boycott" her nowadays anyways. The first Fantastic Beasts movie didn't wow me and I never saw the others, and most of her post-Harry Potter wizarding lore (particular her American lore) has been underwhelming to me.
I think I'll just do a matching donation to a pro-trans charity if I ever buy any official Harry Potter merch going forward. (I already did this on a recent trip in London, where Google guided me to King's Cross station, and I decided to pop into the Platform 9 3/4 store because I had time to kill before the train arrived.)
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