Those of you who have followed our
couple-of-weeks-old Chick_Fil-A coverage will know that this is the same retreat center that hosts
an annual Marriage Comission seminar, featuring invited guests like Maggie Gallagher, Jennifer Roback Morse, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly, and many more who fight in the public square against equality for gay people. A seminar where Chick-Fil-A higher ups both speak and receive personal shout outs (see videos of that
here). At
a retreat that was born out of Chick-Fil-A profits: Profits you contribute to anytime you eat at one of the chain's many locations.
So why are we bringing up more
Chick-Fil-A stuff here and now? Well, we honestly didn't want to. But to be perfectly honest: We're pretty tired of the disingenuous way the company and its defenders
keep acting like we were wacky and out-of-line for simply
letting people know about the company's ties to anti-gay advocacy. And we're also getting annoyed with the way they keep making it all about the one Pennsylvania Family Institute sponsorship that started this ball rolling, when
we brought out soooooooooo much more than just that in subsequent days (and have also clearly shown why even that particular sponsorship
does have demonstrable anti-gay advocacy attached to it via both its local and national parents).
Okay so this is going to take a little explanation. But stick with it. It's a good find, especially in light of
the recent Chick-Fil-A/Pennsylvania Family Institute sponsorship controversy and Chick-Fil-A's corporate
silence on the matter.
So alright, let's begin with some background on the two players we'll be discussing:
The Winshape Foundation is the charitable of Chick-Fil-A and its founder Truett Cathy. The foundation has several Christian focuses, all focused on strengthening certain values. Fair enough. In a perfect world we would all be able to come together and jointly work for some of their very valid goals.
Okay, so Ruth has been pushing something called The Reel Love Video Challenge. We
showed you a promo for the contest back in December. Basically, the idea is for young people to make :30 second videos telling what lifelong love means to them. And again, just like with the Winshape Foundation's work, the whole contest would be totally benign and even positive, if not for Ruth/NOM's agenda towards LGBT people.
Right, so today we were mindlessly knocking around the Reel Love video site, primarily as a distraction. However, through our bored surfing we happened to catch note of a few new references to something unfamiliar to our "culture war" eyes. Something called LoveIsHere.com:
Chick-Fil-A's WinShape Foundation: Now partnering with NOM's Ruth Institute
The Ruth Institute is a spinoff project of the National Organization For Marriage. The group is all about opposing gay marriage, with a particular focus on young people. You might know Ruth's visible head, Jennifer Roback Morse, who we've featured on here a number of times. She's also the one who caught national headlines recently when she talked about wearing a rainbow scarf (that wasn't really rainbow) to the Prop 8 trial as a way of reclaiming the rainbow from the gay rights movement.
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