Chick-fil-A Wants to Open in Toronto, But Canadians Are Ready to Protest and Boycott
The anti-LGBTQ fast food chain Chick-fil-A will open its first international restaurants with three opening in Toronto, Canada, in the first half of 2019 and 12 more expected to open in the city over the next five years. If the Chick-fil-A Toronto restaurants do well, the company will consider opening up in other world cities. But will Canadians boycott Chick-fil-A over its anti-LGBTQ political donations? Numerous Canadians on Twitter have already pledged to do so, with many others pledging to support the restaurant because boycotting a business over its anti-LGBTQ donations is intolerance … or something.
Chick-fil-A President and chief Operating Officer Tim Tassopoulos says Chick-fil-A chose Toronto as its first international spot because of the city’s “diversity and vibrant restaurant culture.” Interested franchise owners can open a new restaurant for about $11,400 U.S. dollars, much cheaper than the $1.1 to $2.6 million U.S. dollars required to start up a McDonald’s or Taco Bell restaurant in the United States.
But there’s already a petition urging Toronto’s mayor not to allow Chick-fil-A to operate in the city, and the hashtag #BoycottChickFilA has begun trending on Twitter with numerous people telling the company they don’t want the planned Chick-fil-A Toronto franchises.
In response a handful of trolls have said it’s intolerant not to accept Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBTQ political donations. But as we’ve explained numerous times in the past, it’s not intolerant when progressives refuse to tolerate right-wing bullshit.
Why will Canadians boycott Chick-Fil-A Toronto? Here’s a quick history of the company’s anti-LGBTQ donations
From 2003–2008 Chick-fil-A’s charitable arm (the WinShape Foundation) donated more than $1.1 million to anti-LGBT groups. In 2009 it about doubled that amount to $2 million. During that time, the company donated millions of dollars to anti-LGBTQ groups (including some that want to criminalize and deport gay “pedophiles”).
In 2012, after Chick-fil-A executives promised to stop supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations, the company’s now-deceased founder S. Truett Cathy continued to show his support to anti-LGBTQ groups and later stated that the company had never agreed to end its anti-LGBTQ funding at all.
According to ThinkProgress, the Chick-fil-A Foundation’s 2015 IRS filings revealed hundreds of thousands in donations to anti-LGBTQ groups, including $1 million to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a religious organization with “a strict ‘sexual purity’ policy, prohibiting any ‘homosexual acts,’” and $200,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, a Georgia-based group that believes that the “sexual, physical and mental abuse of children” resulted in “the explosion of homosexuality in the last century.”
The Chick-fil-A Foundation also gave $130,000 to the Salvation Army, a religious international charity which long opposed same-sex marriage, allegedly practiced anti-LGBTQ housing discrimination and supports religious exemptions from laws forbidding anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
