Why Jonathan Merritt is largely wrong, which isn't why almost everyone says he is
"Faith and culture writer" Jonathan Merritt got a lot wrong in his recent missive "In Defense of Eating at Chick-fil-A" in The Atlantic.
He got one thing pretty right. Boycotts don't move the meter much. As economic game changers they're mostly useless.
But that's not really what this whole mess is about.
Let's start with why it was a really stupid article for him to write.
Jonathan Merritt is a voice of moderation on the religious right. He is a vocal advocate of constructive engagement rather than destructive politics. He also has a bad habit of telling the left what to do. He's done it before, but just wasn't really noticed.
In this case, what gets him into particularly hot water is he's using the tired old "a pox on both your houses" argument, but forgot to actually pox his own house. 13 paragraphs in he mentions recent conservative attempts at boycott over JC Penny and Oreo advertisements, but fails to condemn the protests, merely noting that "Gay and lesbian groups were famously rankled" by the conservative protests.
If he wants to have any moral high ground, he should have been writing this article two months ago about his friends, not now to tell his opponents how to comport themselves.
But even then, he misses the distinction entirely. JC Penny and Kraft (the makers of the Oreo cookie) were assailed by the right because they advertised to gay people. They had the gall to figure out that gay people have money and need things. Maybe they should make gay people feel good about their companies so that gay people will give them money in exchange for things. This is called commerce, and if you claim to love capitalism, you should be in favor of it.
Chick Fil A, on the other hand, did not advertise to conservative Christians. It's corporate lords and masters spent money promoting legislation and public policy designed to marginalize and malign a segment of the population. This isn't commerce. This is politics, and once you bring your company into politics, you've given up the cause of commerce.
I worked for a company not long ago that would not endorse political causes that did not directly impact its business. Queerly speaking, this was the best place I've ever worked. It was open, supporting, extremely welcoming to one an all. But despite being headquartered in California, it would not come out against Prop 8 publicly. Many inside the company tried to get it to, but the company would not budge. And I think this was the right thing to do. I may have agreed with the political position, but why put your company in the middle of a fight that wasn't going to impact its bottom line? Every employee was free to make his or her own associations, but it wasn't in the company's best interest to alienate a large part of its customer base to score points with another large part of its customer base, particularly when the largest part of its customer base didn't give a damn.
The company's CEO intends to enter politics after his corporate career and did not publicly discuss Prop 8 because he couldn't without being the voice of the company, and the company wasn't entering the conversation.
Another part of this situation Merritt completely fails to get right is his insistence that Chick Fil A treats all its customers with respect and dignity. Big fucking deal. It's extraordinarily easy to treat customers with respect and dignity. That's a bar so low limbo champions look at it and go "damn, no one can get under that bar."
Merritt either is woefully stupid or is intentionally obfuscating where the rubber really hits the road in consumer choice these days. The HRC puts out the corporate equality index every year. Many people use it to decide where to spend their money. Not a single question in their survey pertains to how companies treat customers. All the attention is on how companies treat employees.
And this isn't new. People like dealing with companies they view as respecting them and their contributions. You don't communicate this by being nice to the customer coming through the door. People know you respect their business when they see faces that represent their experience in the executive and C-suites. Ask the sophisticated African-American or Latino or Asian-American consumer. This isn't just about advertising (though that's a part of it).
So where's Chick Fil A's lesbian head of HR? Gay head of corporate security? Transgender executive chef?
There hasn't been a single queer employee being trotted out for the media to demonstrate how wonderful this company is, and that is very, very telling.
And Chick Fil A knows this. How do I know they know? I went to their corporate careers site. Of the seven pictures on the page, three are of minorities, two are of women, three are of white guys. So out of their entire company, they chose a majority of pictures that aren't white guys. That isn't a mistake. That isn't coincidence. That's telling women, black people and Asians they have a place at Chick Fil A. Evidently Latinos, not so much.
And finally, where I spend my money matters to me. If where you spend your money doesn't matter to you, please buy whatever you want wherever you want. But don't presume to tell me that I have some sort of obligation to eat at Chick Fil A just so that they don't feel slighted by the people their corporate lords and masters want to literally legislate out of existence. You don't like organized political boycotts? There are plenty being conducted on your side of the aisle to condemn. When you've done that effectively, perhaps we can have a conversation about what should be happening over here.
He got one thing pretty right. Boycotts don't move the meter much. As economic game changers they're mostly useless.
But that's not really what this whole mess is about.
Let's start with why it was a really stupid article for him to write.
Jonathan Merritt is a voice of moderation on the religious right. He is a vocal advocate of constructive engagement rather than destructive politics. He also has a bad habit of telling the left what to do. He's done it before, but just wasn't really noticed.
In this case, what gets him into particularly hot water is he's using the tired old "a pox on both your houses" argument, but forgot to actually pox his own house. 13 paragraphs in he mentions recent conservative attempts at boycott over JC Penny and Oreo advertisements, but fails to condemn the protests, merely noting that "Gay and lesbian groups were famously rankled" by the conservative protests.
If he wants to have any moral high ground, he should have been writing this article two months ago about his friends, not now to tell his opponents how to comport themselves.
But even then, he misses the distinction entirely. JC Penny and Kraft (the makers of the Oreo cookie) were assailed by the right because they advertised to gay people. They had the gall to figure out that gay people have money and need things. Maybe they should make gay people feel good about their companies so that gay people will give them money in exchange for things. This is called commerce, and if you claim to love capitalism, you should be in favor of it.
Chick Fil A, on the other hand, did not advertise to conservative Christians. It's corporate lords and masters spent money promoting legislation and public policy designed to marginalize and malign a segment of the population. This isn't commerce. This is politics, and once you bring your company into politics, you've given up the cause of commerce.
I worked for a company not long ago that would not endorse political causes that did not directly impact its business. Queerly speaking, this was the best place I've ever worked. It was open, supporting, extremely welcoming to one an all. But despite being headquartered in California, it would not come out against Prop 8 publicly. Many inside the company tried to get it to, but the company would not budge. And I think this was the right thing to do. I may have agreed with the political position, but why put your company in the middle of a fight that wasn't going to impact its bottom line? Every employee was free to make his or her own associations, but it wasn't in the company's best interest to alienate a large part of its customer base to score points with another large part of its customer base, particularly when the largest part of its customer base didn't give a damn.
The company's CEO intends to enter politics after his corporate career and did not publicly discuss Prop 8 because he couldn't without being the voice of the company, and the company wasn't entering the conversation.
Another part of this situation Merritt completely fails to get right is his insistence that Chick Fil A treats all its customers with respect and dignity. Big fucking deal. It's extraordinarily easy to treat customers with respect and dignity. That's a bar so low limbo champions look at it and go "damn, no one can get under that bar."
Merritt either is woefully stupid or is intentionally obfuscating where the rubber really hits the road in consumer choice these days. The HRC puts out the corporate equality index every year. Many people use it to decide where to spend their money. Not a single question in their survey pertains to how companies treat customers. All the attention is on how companies treat employees.
And this isn't new. People like dealing with companies they view as respecting them and their contributions. You don't communicate this by being nice to the customer coming through the door. People know you respect their business when they see faces that represent their experience in the executive and C-suites. Ask the sophisticated African-American or Latino or Asian-American consumer. This isn't just about advertising (though that's a part of it).
So where's Chick Fil A's lesbian head of HR? Gay head of corporate security? Transgender executive chef?
There hasn't been a single queer employee being trotted out for the media to demonstrate how wonderful this company is, and that is very, very telling.
And Chick Fil A knows this. How do I know they know? I went to their corporate careers site. Of the seven pictures on the page, three are of minorities, two are of women, three are of white guys. So out of their entire company, they chose a majority of pictures that aren't white guys. That isn't a mistake. That isn't coincidence. That's telling women, black people and Asians they have a place at Chick Fil A. Evidently Latinos, not so much.
And finally, where I spend my money matters to me. If where you spend your money doesn't matter to you, please buy whatever you want wherever you want. But don't presume to tell me that I have some sort of obligation to eat at Chick Fil A just so that they don't feel slighted by the people their corporate lords and masters want to literally legislate out of existence. You don't like organized political boycotts? There are plenty being conducted on your side of the aisle to condemn. When you've done that effectively, perhaps we can have a conversation about what should be happening over here.