I agree with you here
Hell, growing up in music scene, I would tire of hearing bands preach even about things I believed/believed in.
I get it.
Entertain me, that's what I paid for.
In this case - I just want tasty food.
As for this case - they arent going out and broadcasting that they are giving donations to these groups
They took a conservative stance a few years ago about gay marriage. Folks lined up for their sandwiches then, and, at that time, I said it was foolish to do so. Just go because you like it, not some stance they take on something that doesnt even affect you.
Or, in this case, keep on going because of the delicious food, not because they gave some money to a group you dont agree with.
a business exists in a moral atmosphere. It is idiocy to deny it. You are celebrating (in a capitalist enterprise), unregulated choice to buy my stuff rather than the guy down the street, freedom to choose how and when and where my products will be offered, and at what price, unrestrained expenditure of capital on this item vs that item, the sovereignty of the consumer to put me in business and keep me in business. and the liberty of a gazillion little people who all make up the supply chains which provide my products and the money the guy buying them gets to spend. ALL these things rest on a network and collage of BELIEFS which ultimately are moral and thus "religious" in some sense (no one has ever come up yet with anything remotely resembling a coherent irreligious moral system, and I defy you to find it... yes I have read the pile of slop Ayn Rand wrote and will be happy to dissect and ridicule that incoherent pile of nonsense with you if you like).
Simply stated, there is no such thing as a commercial apartheid, where the laws of business exist APART from the substrate they grow from. It is the same way with science. It is no accident that modern science did NOT arise in the East, or the Middle East, but only in an intellectual atmosphere in which the ideas of rationality, order, predictability of events, uniformity of matter and others were predicated on a philosophical root of GOD who is constant, and created man to be able to count on the observations he makes as reliable. Modern post rational westerners sneer at this, but it is only because they are so immersed in the benefits of this that it is inconceivable to them that entire cultures can and did exist with the presupposition of irrationality, unpredictability, disorder and chaos. This kills science, just as the ideas of materialism and quantum uncertainty will ultimately kill science in the West, unless we return to the true basis for science itself.
THEREFORE, it is certainly reasonable (and frankly, to be expected) that people would use their businesses, or art, to be a "platform" for fundamental views. It is nonsense to expect otherwise, and frankly rests on a fairy tale wish fulfillment that we could build these areas on a "secular" basis. That "secular" basis is stupidly ignoring the fact that it rests on universal knowledge principles that secularism could NEVER produce. It is very much a case of the scorpion stinging the frog to death while crossing the stream. The frog is stupid for being naive about the nature of the scorpion, and the scorpion is so blinded by hate for the frog that it does not realize (or care??) that this will bring his own death.
I dont' fault Chik fil A for "bringing religion into business"... as though business can exist independently of a religious base. ALL world views are religious. Some are just naive about the religious basis of what they are proclaiming.
As far as the SPLC goes, this is (imo) just a lazy play to the keepers of the culture... like "see... we aren't racist!" I cannot believe this is more than a lazy uninformed crass attempt to buy off the hate driven preeners without doing much research into who they are writing checks to.
Christians and conservatives should say "yes, this is a bad move, and in fact a move which destroys what you say you believe. You should stop it, issue an apology, and find worthy recipients of they money." It is not like we (the most strident critics) have never made colossal blunders in judgment ourselves. It happens. It is what "repentance" is all about. FIDO (forget it, drive on)