Ah the Chick-fil-a wars, flaring up in good ole’ Chicago.
If you missed it, Mayor Rahm Emmanul essentially vetoed a plan for the
southern chicken based fast food chain chick-fil-a to open a franchise in the
loop (that’s downtown Chicago for all you east coast swells). This was in no small part based on the fact
that chick-fill-a’s supreme leader and president announced to the media that he
was for a legal definition of “traditional marriage” (btw I don’t think my
parents would count as “traditional marriage” {whatever that means} as they
both had jobs and stuff throughout my childhood, which in no way would Don
Draper have approved of). That said, he
meant it about gay people, and how gay folks shouldn’t be able to get married
to each other. But the denial of zoning
permits by the City of Chicago was treated as the end of the universe by some
conservative public intellectuals. Ross
Douthat led the charge by claiming that a denial of building permits in the
city of Chicago is the greatest affront to democracy in the history of the
Republic.
Guess it was like the Fort-Sumnter-being-fired-upon for
fried chicken aficionados. But this type
of zoning fight strikes me as being almost inevitable. I mean, once you turn marriage and who gets
to be a family into a political issue, politicians will treat it like a
political issue, because you made it a
political issue. Douthat wants to
have his cake and eat it too. He wants
it to be fine for state legislators or voters to treat who gets to marry who as
a matter of political preference but then he loses his mind when the other side
of that political argument responds politically. I mean, if marriage and who gets to be a
family becomes a political issue, don’t be shocked when politicians treat the
issue politically! Mayor Rahm’s actions
might not be the model of municipal governance but if captain chick-fil-a
wanted to get his zoning permits through easily, he shouldn’t have started
demanding the state start making laws about who gets to marry who and who gets
to be a family while others are relegated to the status of sub-families. And why?
Because significant political constituencies in the City of Chicago find
those sorts of political statements incredibly offensive. And in this country local communities have
controls over their zoning from opening bars to opening tire plants. Once marriage is made a political issue,
politicians will act politically, because politicians respond to political
issues in a political manner.
If it’s okay to put some folk’s marriage in the political
gun sights, it’s okay to tie up your zoning and building permits, because you
just said that one of the most basic acts of life-the ability to marry who you
love-is a political issue. So why can’t
your zoning permit be a political issue?
Cry me a river Douthat, just don’t try to marry David Brooks, some
states have laws against that sort of thing.
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