Opinion

Pittsburgh School Board Attacks Chick-fil-A Because of Its Christian Beliefs

The major event over the weekend that took place in Pittsburgh was the murder of Jews who were celebrating a bris at a local synagogue. It’s a tragedy beyond comprehension. These types of murderers are cowards. When things go awry in their lives, they look for a scapegoat to justify their failures. It’s someone else’s fault. Blame immigrants, blacks, whites, Jews. Blame shirting is one of the world’s oldest and pernicious sins (Gen 3:12).

I grew up in Pittsburgh. I grew up with Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, fellow-Italians, Irish, and nearly every ethnic group under the sun. We all got along. Were there hidden prejudices. No doubt there were. Even so, no one would have thought of doing anything like what happened on Saturday.

Fellow Pittsburgh resident and friend Jerry Bowyer had this to say:

Two things come to mind as I look at this mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue this morning. The first is something I learned from my good friend George Gilder in his book The Israel Test. Anti-semitism is the ideology of losers. It’s the ideology of low IQ, lazy bottom feeders. Some people look at success and say “What can I do to be like that?,” but some people look at success and seethe in their little den like Grendel1 listening to the feast and say “How can I tear that down?”

It’s the green-eyed monster called envy. Envy is different from jealousy and covetousness.

The covetous person says, “I wish I had what he has, and I’m miserable that I don’t have it.” Envy is quantitatively different. The envier thinks to himself and votes accordingly: “I’d like to have what he has, but I know I can never get it. Nobody should be allowed to have it or at least that much of it. If I can’t have it, neither should anyone, and if I can’t make this happen, I’ll make sure it costs the person who possesses it a lot own it. I’ll work to destroy people who can afford these things. Maybe I can get the government to make it illegal to own or too expensive to keep.”

This is why the Bible describes envy as “rottenness of the bones” (Prov. 14:30).

R. J. Rushdoony writes, “Helmut Schoek, in Envy (1966), called attention to the deadly role played in society by envy. Envy demands the leveling of all things, because the envious man finds superiority in others intolerable. He sees it better to turn the world into hell rather than to allow anyone to prosper more than himself, or to be superior to him. Envy negates progress.”

Envy is not just about economics. It’s “worldviewish.” Certain belief systems perform better than others. What people believe about how the world works matters.

Pagan religions are typically animistic or pantheistic, treating the natural world either as the abode of the divine or as an emanation of God’s own essence. The most familiar form of animism holds that spirits or gods reside in nature. In the words of Harvey Cox, a Baptist theologian, pagan man “lives in an enchanted forest.” Glens and groves, rocks and streams are alive with spirits, sprites, demons. Nature teems with sun gods, river goddesses, astral deities.2

The same is true of cultures that have abandoned God. Morally speaking, up is down and down is up. As these upside-down beliefs manifest themselves consistently they create a sterile world. Abortion and same-sex sexuality cannot function consistently over time. They are non-producers. In order to maintain the illogic of their belief system, they must oppose and destroy all worldviews that question and outperform them.

What has not gotten much national attention is what the school board in Pittsburgh did to Chick-fil-A:

Pittsburgh’s school board barred district employees and its schools from officially participating in a kids’ run sponsored by Chick-fil-A in a resolution passed Wednesday — and that’s left organizers of the Pittsburgh Marathon dumbfounded, KDKA-TV reported.

Once word got out last month that Chick-fil-A was the title sponsor for next year’s Kids Marathon in Pittsburgh — a mile race that comes the day before the Pittsburgh Marathon — some folks got upset.

The Post-Gazette reported that all nine city council members signed a letter asking the marathon to trash the deal — one that puts the fast-food franchise’s name on the kids’ race, WESA-FM said.

Pittsburgh Public Schools traditionally puts together teams for the kids’ run, the station said. But several members opposed the Chick-fil-A sponsorship over statements the founder’s son has made in support of traditional marriage, which has long irked LGBT and gay-rights advocates.

“They have several beliefs, which they’ve expressed officially, largely through religious basis, that are quite discriminatory and are quite inconsistent with the district’s policies regarding discrimination on the basis of gender, race, etc.,” Ira Weiss, the school solicitor, told the Post-Gazette.

It seems that while antisemitism is horrible (and it is), almost nothing is said about being antiChristian.

Chick-fil-A does not discriminate against anyone. “The chicken fast-food corporation told the station that ‘our restaurants welcome everyone, and we have no policy of discrimination against any group. We do not have a political or social agenda.’” Even so, the school board’s decision, fueled by pressure from the LGBT community, decided to discriminate against the popular restaurant chain.

Chick-fil-A is such an evil company that it has done the following:

For years Leftists have been unsuccessfully trying to destroy Chick-fil-A. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had called for a boycott of Chick-fil-A without success. “What the ownership of Chick-fil-A has said is wrong,” de Blasio said. “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them. But they do have a legal right.” (AJC) And what did Dan Cathy say? He believes in traditional marriage, that is, the marriage of one man with one woman. I know. It was a shocking statement to make.

The anti-Chick-fil-A rhetoric by numerous people and groups led Floyd Corkins to shoot a Family Research Council, a Christian organization that supports traditional (Bible-based marriage),  employee. If the wounded guard had not stopped the shooter, the result would have been similar to what happened at the Pittsburgh synagogue. If this had happened, Democrats and their media sycophants would have blamed the Family Research Council. “Floyd Corkins has said he disagreed with the Family Research Council’s stance against gay marriage. … When Corkins was arrested investigators found 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack. He told the FBI he planned to kill as many people as he could at the research council and then smash the sandwiches in their faces. The head of Chick-fil-A had announced opposition to gay marriage.” (CNN)

How quickly the Left forgets how Christians have been attacked for hateful rhetoric from their side of the aisle.

  1. Beowulf’s Grendel “attacks the Danes because his own enforced isolation has made him hate those who are able to enjoy society and companionship. As Heorot is a symbol of such society and companionship, being the place where the Danes congregate to eat, drink, tell stories, build fellowship among each other, and share in the generosity of their king, Grendel’s attack on Heorot is thus symbolic as an attack on the idea of society itself.” []
  2. Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), 23–24. []
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