Cowed by the Left, Chick-fil-A Stands by DEI Despite Culture Shift

While much of corporate America is — at least publicly — abandoning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), one company is standing firm against the backlash even though DEI conflicts with its purported Christian beliefs. That company is Chick-fil-A.

Founded in 1967 by the late S. Truett Cathy, a Southern Baptist, Chick-fil-A claims its mission is “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us.” Yet the company, which thrived in the face of nonstop attacks from the Left for so many years, appears to have capitulated at precisely the moment when the cultural winds have shifted in its favor. As The Washington Stand’s Suzanne Bowdey put it, “Why willingly surrender in a war you’ve already won?”

Embracing DEI

The latest evidence is Chick-fil-A’s response to a local franchisee’s public celebration of same-sex “marriage.” On December 3, reported Bowdey, the Orem, Utah, Chick-fil-A

posted [on Facebook] a gushing set of photos of two men in each other’s arms from their official account with the headline, “CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HAPPY COUPLE! Dougie & Toby recently got married and we are beyond happy for them! (ring emoji)”

Although this wasn’t an official post from the corporation, Chick-fil-A was soon notified of it by customers who correctly perceived a contradiction between the post and the company’s supposed Christian values. Corporate’s response was not to order the removal of the offending post (as of Monday, the post was still up, according to Bowdey) but to issue a statement essentially endorsing it. That statement, sent to inquiring customers, read in part:

Chick-fil-A embraces all people, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Chick-fil-A, Inc. is committed to being Better at Together by embedding Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) in everything we do. We strive to provide a welcoming and inclusive place for everyone….

To learn more, visit … our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page.

Observed Bowdey:

Obviously, we’d expect a company rooted (at least formerly) in biblical values to serve everyone. That’s scriptural. But there’s a difference between selling a chicken sandwich to someone and celebrating their behavior. 

Regardless, it’s absolutely baffling in America’s current pushback climate that any company — let alone a self-proclaimed Christian one — would openly admit to “embedding Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)” in “everything we do.” Obviously, this isn’t a business caught unaware by a single rogue operator. This is a business with a deep and pervasive problem of activism. [Emphasis in original.]

Feeding the Hand That Bites It

Indeed, Chick-fil-A’s abandonment of its Christian character began nearly a decade ago — soon after Cathy’s death — a fact that only became widely known in 2019, when the company decided to stop donating to certain Christian organizations in an obvious attempt to mollify leftist agitators who complained that the groups were “anti-LGBT.” At that point, it emerged that Chick-fil-A had already been contributing to left-wing groups as well, including Covenant House, which marched in New York City’s Gay Pride parade and hosts Drag Queen Story Hour; the pro-abortion YWCA and Pace Center for Girls; and, most notoriously, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The New American reported at the time:

In 2012, the SPLC’s designation of the Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group” — which still stands — led one Floyd Lee Corkins to storm FRC’s D.C. headquarters, armed with a handgun, 50 rounds of ammunition, and a supply of Chick-fil-A sandwiches. According to the Washington Examiner, Corkins told Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents that “he went to the FRC to kill people and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his victims’ faces” because both FRC and Chick-fil-A opposed same-sex “marriage.”

Five years later, Chick-fil-A wrote the SPLC a $2,500 check.

Chickening Out

According to Bowdey, Chick-fil-A’s

moral compromise was such a betrayal that Mike Huckabee, who’d led 2012’s wildly successful Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to thank the Cathy family for their public stand on marriage, said one of the “biggest regrets of his life” was rallying behind the chain.

When, in 2023, it came to light that Chick-fil-A had hired a DEI officer two years earlier, Huckabee told FRC President Tony Perkins, “They’ve bought into a lie.”

He elaborated:

They’ve hired someone to be their vice president of DEI. And when a company does that, what they basically are saying is: “We want to be able to sit at the cool kids’ table.… We don’t want to be over there by ourselves anymore. We don’t want people to make fun of us or point their fingers at us.”

But, of course, most progressives still hate Chick-fil-A, while the company is slowly but surely frittering away its Christian cachet.

Even if Chick-fil-A doesn’t officially endorse the Orem restaurant’s post, its embrace of DEI “provides cover to local operators who want to push the boundaries of the company’s ethics and embrace something as antithetical to a biblical worldview as same-sex marriage,” penned Bowdey.

FRC’s David Closson told Bowdey:

Christians can and should affirm kindness, hospitality, and equal treatment for all customers and employees. But love for neighbor never requires affirming what God calls sinful or endorsing identities that obscure rather than reflect His created design.

A mission committed to glorifying God must be anchored in truth as well as compassion. When corporate statements blur that distinction, they drift from a biblical foundation toward a secular ethic that cannot sustain the Christian identity Chick-fil-A has sought to cultivate over the years.