Whether their opponent made a small donation for a ballot initiative against gay marriage or ate a chicken sandwich in solidarity with a company that stands for traditional marriage, the Left in America has a history of not only trying to politically destroy their opponents on the Right, but wreak complete havoc on the people who oppose their views.
Margie Christoffersen managed a Los Angeles restaurant for 26-years before her $100 donation in support of Proposition 8, the successful California ballot initiative banning gay marriage, destroyed her life.
As manager, she employed numerous gay employees, and her restaurant was popular within the gay community. However, after Prop. 8 passed, opponents of the effort learned of her donation and then made her restaurant the target of intense protesting. The police arrived in riot gear one night to quell an angry mob yelling “shame on you” at passing customers. Ultimately, she was forced to resign, but not before attempting multiple tearful apologies with members of the gay community.
Christoffersen’s experience was shared by many relatively small donors to the Prop 8 campaign thanks to California’s online campaign finance disclosure database.
When a $100 donation to a ballot initiative can provoke that kind of hateful reaction, it’s no wonder fast-food chain Chick-fil-A, whose website lists its corporate purpose as “glorify[ing] God,” became the Left’s latest punching bag.
Lately, progressives have gone absolutely berserk over the (already obvious) traditional marriage views of the Chief Operating Officer of Chick-fil-A. The past two weeks has seen its share of boycotts, “kiss-ins,” and incoherent rhetoric.
Comedian Roseanne Barr asserted on Twitter that anyone who ate Chick-fil-A “deserves to get cancer.” One MSNBC host claimed that anyone who supports gay-rights who eats at Chick-fil-A is a “chicken eating Judas.” Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Grey referred to the company’s product as “hate chicken.”
In an effort to promote “tolerance,” elected officials in San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago intolerantly announced that new Chick-fil-A restaurants would not be welcome in their cities. I suspect if permits were denied to business owners because they openly endorsed gay-rights, liberals would recall that the First Amendment prohibits that sort of thing.
Although Chick-fil-A will ultimately survive and likely thrive due to a reactionary, conservative surge in chicken-sandwich demand, the ordeal offers another perfect illustration of the progressive Left’s destructive politics.
It’s not simply enough to criticize political opponents; they have to demean and destroy their livelihoods.
And it’s not just the Rush Limbaugh-types who have to worry about the Left’s fury. In February, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation faced a political uproar and mass-boycott after it decided to pull a relatively insignificant amount of funding from Planned Parenthood.
When the Left has no qualms with destroying a non-profit group dedicated to fighting breast cancer, all Americans should be very frightened, and that’s exactly the point. It is a political strategy specifically designed to curtail dissenting speech and actions through fear (and oddly enough, conservatives are the ones that consistently get hit with the “facism” smear).
Although some have ridiculed the Right’s wildly successful Chick-fil-A “appreciation day,” a cheap chicken sandwich seems like a small price to pay to prevent intolerant Leftists from bullying and destroying a dissenter.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to defend relatively unknown individuals like Los Angeles’ Margie Christoffersen. All Americans should therefore be put on notice: defend free-speech rights now, or like Christoffersen, whose 26-year career was ruined by a $100 donation, you might be next.