A post in which I talk about Chick Fil A

This is a selfish post, but I need to do it.  But then I guess all these posts are selfish.  The saying "scratch a blogger and find an ego-maniac' holds more truth than I would like.  I need to write this out and get it off my heart though.

I was having an average day at work today.  It's month end, and I've been pretty busy with that.  I hadn't been paying much attention to what was going on around me - I had my head pretty much buried in the computer all day. 

Towards the end of the day though, a conversation caught my ear.  I hadn't thought much about the euphemistically named "Chick Fil A appreciation day" (which would have been more properly named "Get your ass to the back of the bus, faggot" day), but a couple of the women I work with were talking about it.  One of these women sits right behind me.  She is a youth pastor's wife, and we have had conversations about the difficulty of living a good life, about church, etc.  This was someone I thought I knew, someone I thought of as good-hearted.  She and another woman were talking about making a point of going to Chick Fil A today for lunch, and how many people were there, and how long they had to wait in line, and just generally congratulating each other on the success of the day. 

As much as I wanted to tune out, I couldn't. 

I'm used to living in a section of the country where my status as a second-class citizen is just accepted as a fact of daily life.  I vacillate between feeling like Scarlett O'Hara refusing to leave Tara, and the last Jew in Berlin in 1939.  So the internal debate over whether I am a hero(ine) or an idiot is a familiar one for yours truly.  But going through treatment last year kind of renewed my faith in people.  Plus, I suppose for my own sanity, I live in a kind of miasma of denial that no one I know would do such a thing.  But here they were talking about this, gloating, with me sitting right there!  At that point, I didn't feel like a second-class citizen.  I felt like a non-person.  And it hurt my feelings. 

When I was younger, I went through a period where I was somewhat of an activist.  I marched, I chanted, I took no guff off of anyone, and wasn't hesitant to get in people's faces.  As I became older, I got out of the habit.  That's a difficult way to live your life, and it's so much easier to go along to get along.  I told myself that I had moved from a role of activism to that of trying to be a 'good will ambassador' for the gay community.

Gay people in TV and the movies now have come to be regarded as somewhat amusing pets for straight women.  I didn't have a problem with that role.  I thought that it was better to be thought of as a pet than as a monster.  Various people have argued with this position through the years, with their position being that they were men, and had dignity as people which being a 'pet' undermined.  I wonder now if they were right.  I feel less like an ambassador right now than like an Uncle Tom.   

Eventually, one of the other women asked what the big deal was about going to Chick Fil A today, and they explained that they were supporting the company as a 'Christian business'.  When I pointed out that the company gives millions of dollars to Focus on the Family (speaking of euphemistic names) and their ilk, she seemed surprised, and professed ignorance to their goals.  I suppose that's possible.  But there was really no way to read enough about this issue to even know there was a 'Chick Fil A appreciation day' and not know what it was about.  The religious and political right were using this as a tool to express their support for a company  that was opposed to gay marriage, and financially supporting those fighting against equality. 

So IF she really didn't know what she was doing (very skeptical here) then shame on her for marching with a sign she didn't bother to read first.  But goodness knows there is no requirement to know what you're talking about before wading into the social discourse in this country.  If there were, 90% of the political discussion in this country would immediately stop.  I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about whether that would be a good or bad thing.

What I can't get past, and what is keeping me upset and hurt, is that someone who knows me personally, who sits beside me every day, thinks that I don't deserve to be an equal citizen.  That someone I know would so casually disregard my feelings.  That I am not deserving of the things that she enjoys.  That because of who I am, I should be denied to see my partner if he was in the hospital.  That hurts. 

Fortunately, this little incident took place at the end of the day.  I was working late, so I just left the office.

I had things I needed to do tonight anyway.  I had cooking to do, and being in the kitchen is something I enjoy, and that takes my mind off of things.  I put a load of laundry in, and made the pasta primavera that I had been meaning to put together all week.  It turned out pretty well, and was tastier that I thought it would be, despite my following the recipe with no 'tweaks'.

But cooking didn't clear my head.  I was structuring a dialogue in my mind of what I could say to this woman about the way I felt.  It's inappropriate to launch a discussion about gay marriage in the workplace, and I doubt I would change her mind any more than she would change mine.  I thought about trying to explain that she had hurt my feelings.  I remembered Proverbs 15:1 A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. But I didn't trust myself to talk to her about this without getting upset.  I thought about composing an email.  In the end though, I decided to do what I felt Christ would have done.  I'm going to turn the other cheek.  Not in a weenie way.  I'm certainly not afraid to have this discussion, and apparently I am much better informed about the issue that she is.  But I have made a conscious decision to let discretion be the better part of valor.  It's going to be difficult for me to just go in and act like nothing is wrong though.  I don't think I can engage warmly at this point.  But I'm not going to sulk.

After supper I went to get birthday cards and presents for tomorrow night.  I really can't afford birthday presents right now, but doing something nice for someone else generally lifts my spirits.  It kind of worked, I guess.  I loaded up the car with stuff I needed with me tomorrow and turned in.  As Scarlett says "Tomorrow is another day."