Chic-Fil-A Belongs in our Cities

by Matt Recker

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn Christine Quinn is not only one of the New York State’s most powerful politicians, but she is one of the nation’s most prominent openly gay officials. A top mayoral candidate for the next election, she wrote a letter to New York University president requesting that the school remove the Chic-fil-A from their campus. She wrote, “I write as the Speaker of the NYC Council, and on behalf of my family. NYC is a place where we celebrate diversity… we revel in the diversity of all our citizens and their families. Let me be clear—I do not want establishments in my city that hold such discriminatory views. We are a city that believes our diversity is our greatest strength and we will fight anything and anyone that runs counter to that.”

What prompted this letter was the public statements of Dan Cathy, the president and CEO of Chic-Fil-A, that he is supportive of “the biblical definition of the family unit” and he offered a prayer for “God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is all about.”

Speaker Quinn says she revels in the diversity of all the citizens and families of New York, but in reality she discounts any citizen or family that believes in the Biblical definition of the family. Ms. Quinn longs for a diversity that is free from Christian belief, and along with the mayors of other major cities like Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago, she is denying the freedom of speech to others she disagrees with. Ms Quinn and those in the LGBT community commonly claim Christians are intolerant and discriminatory, but her words reek of the very attitudes she accuses us of. Since there is only one Chic-Fil-A in all of New York City, to eliminate its presence would make our city less diverse, and not more. If she wants diversity, Chic-Fil-A should stay. If this business is refused a presence in our cities because of the faith of its CEO, then what is to keep city officials from deciding who does business, who buys property, or who is welcome in our great American cities, with the LGBT agenda as the chief litmus test. Ms Quinn is severely mistaken. Diversity is not our greatest strength, but our freedom to worship, to believe, and to speak is.


Matt Recker is the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in New York City.