The Chik-Pocalypse continues…

A whole lot of this argument is people talking past each other. There are two things at play here:

1) The justification of boycotting an establishment for its owner’s views
2) The justification of the government to ban the opening of an establishment for its owner’s views.

The first is completely fine and justified. You have a right to shop wherever you please, and to deliberately NOT shop wherever you please. There’s nothing in contention here, save for the occasional “Don’t boycott these guys because that hurts the workers’ paychecks” argument, which is bogus. You have a choice of where to work, and complaining about other people exercising their right of choice because it hurts your bottom line is asinine. Voting with dollars is the only mechanism of redress that the public has for an establishment who’s owner holds odious views.

The second item, banning the establishment from the city, is NOT justified. Unless and until it can be shown, via legally-admissable evidence, that CFA discriminates based on religion or sexual orientation in its hiring or how it treats its employees, there is no legal basis for the government to bar them from doing business. As odious as I find the Cathy family’s views on marriage, simply having and expressing those views is not valid grounds for government intervention in their ability to operate a business. You are free to boycott them, as I do, and to advise everyone you can to do the same. The First Amendment does not protect you from civil repercussions of your speech. But it does protect you from government interfering with your right to that speech.