Indiana University has banned Chick-fil-A from its South Bend campus.
Why?
It’s all because one of the popular company’s restaurants in Pennsylvania has announced plans to donate food to the Pennsylvania Family Institute and Family Life for The Art of Marriage: Getting to the Heart of God’s Design conference.
Translation: According to Indiana University, those who support (or even hint at supporting) traditional marriage are not welcome, and by association, neither are their chicken sandwiches, waffle fries or handspun milkshakes.
Who needs to worry about “Big Brother” when “Big Academia” will do the job for you?
As we witnessed with Apple’s refusal to reinstate the Manhattan Declaration app, there is an ominous trend developing for those who support traditional biblical principles. What have we come to when a company is booted from a campus for being perceived as supporting traditional marriage, something the majority of Americans still strongly support?
The forced departure of Chick-fil-A from IU South Bend is really not about the loss of a food vendor but rather the loss of free speech and religious liberty.
To bully corporate America in this manner is unsavory and in this instance, counterproductive. Traditional marriage remains the great societal stabilizer. That’s because research continues to affirm that the happiest and healthiest people are those who find themselves in strong and committed marriages and that children raised in those unions do better on virtually every measure of well-being.
Indiana University should be eager to partner with great companies like Chick-fil-A who are willing to invest in first principles that go well beyond the company’s bottom line.
Ironically, the site of Chick-fil-A’s former home at the Indiana University branch was the Courtside Café, a facility whose motto is “Making People Happy.” In this instance, IU may have made some homosexual activists happy, but may very well make everyone else mad (especially Chick-fil-A’s raving fans) in the long run.
On a related note, I would like to applaud the terrific work of Michael Geer and his talented team at the Pennsylvania Family Institute. When I think of their efforts, I am reminded of the apostle Paul’s charge to the church at Thessaloniki to “never tire of doing what is right.” That’s the motto that Michael and his team live by.
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