(Community Matters) surprised a former colleague defriended me on FB today when I replied to his posting expressing his frustration with the Chick-Fil-A controversy. Our comments veered to his argument that white males were the most discriminated demographic today. Perhaps I should have left that unchallenged or even better, perhaps I should have acknowledged the economic backslide in today’s economy is greatest for non-college educated white males. They have the furthest to go in terms of the recalibration of wages in today’s economy where all America’s middle class is threatened.
I find it interesting that he perceives a job requirement to speak Spanish as discrimination (I know, I know, neither do I but he (& maybe others) do, so we should simply know this). This former colleague, who’s never been religious and in fact is quite a heathen, now cites religious freedom in defense of Chick-Fil-A.
For the record, I don’t think municipalities should be able to prevent Chick-Fil-A from opening in their borders. I do believe, however, that we have every right to boycott & picket, persuade elected leaders to bully pulpit against, and to prevent them from accessing any public entitlements. It’s politics. We’re winning – sure we suffer setbacks. We could suffer huge setbacks if Pres O loses reelection. But, the trend is there. Over time, LGBT Americans will win full equality. We’ve gained lots of ground in 20 years – much more than was imaginable to those of us sitting around the HRC, GLADD, LGRL and NGLTF board tables 20 years ago. And, we know our fiercest opponents are aging out.
Anyhow . . . back to the non-college educated, white male thing. There’s a real threat that more and more under-educated, under-employed and under-compensated Americans will find scape goats for their threatening economic situation. It should concern us all.
Community Matters 
A couple of odd things about your friend’s response to the Chik-Fil-A brouhaha. First, far from being the victim of religious discrimination, Chik-Fil-A demands special consideration for its owners’ religious sensibilities. I worked for years at a slightly upscale mall in Fort Worth (the only one in the city with a Neiman-Marcus), and by the terms of their leases, every store in the mall had to be open on Sunday–except Chik-Fil-A, which objected so strenuously to its (presumably non-Jewish) employees being forced to work on the Sabbath that the mall’s owners caved in. Religious exceptionalism is not the same thing as religious freedom.
In the current controversy, when Chik-Fil-A decided to make public its support for groups opposed to marriage equality, it knowingly invited exactly the response it got. And religion is at most an incidental aspect of it all. If the founder objected to gay marriage because the thought of it just made him feel “icky,” the picketing and boycotts would have been no less clamorous. No one is asking anyone at Chik-Fil-A to change or give up their religion, the company is not being penalized by any government for its owners’ religious views (the ridiculous statements by mayors claiming to be able to keep the company from opening stores in their cities notwithstanding–the godless commies at the ACLU would be the first to jump to Chik-Fil-A’s defense), and unless the company is claiming that Chik-Fil-A is itself a religion, there is no religious persecution involved in any of this. In the opinion of this heathen.
The owners of Chik-Fil-A are free to give their money to any groups they choose to support, and the rest of us are just as free to refuse to provide them with the funds to do so if those groups are dedicated to making our lives worse.
The hollowing-out of the U.S. economy and what it’s meant for non-college-educated males is another topic entirely. My gut feeling: a complete reorienting of education, maybe along a two-tiered track (vocational and college-bound, with no middle option) that most Americans shrink from as too elitist and programmatic (and offering too little in the way of self-actualization).