Cancel Culture, the War on Christmas, and Chick-fil-A
Happy Holidays, everyone! And by that, I mean, in no particular order, Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, All Saints Day, Three Kings Day, Black Friday, the Day of the Dead, Guy Fawkes Day, Evolution Day, the end of Daylight Saving Time, Hanukkah, Boxing Day, my friend Tommy’s birthday, Kwanzaa, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day. “Happy holidays” sure is a time saver. Some of these are celebrated with more fanfare than others, or by more people than others, and the mileage varies on the devotion of the religious holidays. But not singling out that last one is seen by a small but loud group as a terrible insult and tantamount to mockery and degradation of their beliefs.
The official beginning of the season might as well be when Starbucks rolls out their holiday cups and Fox News anchors show up to lose their minds about how the actual word Christmas is absent. Starbucks could release a special cup with “Jesus Is King” in bright gold all-capital letters on it, and some racist asshole would go on tv to whine, “It doesn’t say Christmas!”
On November 11, Wiconsin put up its “holiday tree” and former governor Scott Walker decided to pounce. You may not remember Walker from a failed presidential campaign in 2015. He started it a few months after refusing to tell a crowd in England whether he believed in evolution, and he lost his reelection as governor in 2018 to a science teacher. Anyway, he fired shots in the War on Christmas with a picture of his own tree, inexplicably decorated in early November, and tweeting, “This is a Christmas tree…not a holiday tree.” Thankfully, people explained that, yeah, in Scott Walker’s living room, it is a Christmas tree. But when you put it in a government building, it becomes a holiday tree because of the First Amendment.
On November 18, Christmas came early to the Christian persecution narrative, when Chick-fil-A announced that it wouldn’t be donating to the Salvation Army or the Fellowship of Christian Athletes anymore. Mike Huckabee, two-time failed presidential candidate, who created a “Celebrate Chick-fil-A” holiday the year after the company had donated to a conversion therapy organization, got to scream and rant and rave about how they were “giving in to leftist bullies.” I can’t help but think he was as excited as he was dismayed at the news. Here was proof, as far as he was concerned, that Christians are a persecuted minority and religious liberty was under attack.
Unfortunately, the bad takes did not end with Mike Huckabee. Writing for CNN, lesbian activist Allison Hope described this as “nothing short of cancel culture.” She wrote, “I know firsthand that protests work to get attention when nothing else does, and then you shove your hand in the slightly open door that’s been locked for years, and you shake the slimy hand on the other side. Because then they listen when you talk. Because then you can build influence and you can, with time, help turn one small win into many more victories and create meaningful, and long-lasting change.” She seems to have forgotten that the only reason she’s able to approach the door is because trans women of color threw bricks at cops at Stonewall!
Winning hearts and minds is a luxury when you’re not fighting for your right to exist. The Transgender Day of Remembrance I mentioned earlier was November 20. On that date, Republican lawmakers in South Carolina prefiled the “Youth Gender Reassignment Prevention Act,” essentially making gender affirmation illegal. At least 26 trans or gender non-conforming people were murdered last year, most of them women of color. Ms. Hope finished by writing that progress “shouldn’t come at the cost of our civility,” but “civility” is being used as a cudgel to tell marginalized people to shut up.
All of the supposed victims of cancel culture are still rich and/or famous and/or sitting on the Supreme Court. For an activist who supposedly has LGBT interests in mind to invoke “cancel culture” as applying to a corporation worth 6.6 billion dollars is irresponsible. It is a conservative boogeyman not unlike the War on Christmas.
Chick-fil-A now will be giving to Covenant House International, which serves homeless youth and has an LGBTQ-affirming policy. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, was upset by this, because in his worldview, homelessness is something gay people deserve. The myth of the War on Christmas has anti-Semitic origins, about secular Jews taking over the world. It was advanced by Henry Ford, and was part of Donald Trump’s bigoted presidential campaign. It has never been illegal to say the words Merry Christmas.
And now our dumb, racist president has decided that there’s a War on Thanksgiving. I was almost finished with a draft of this piece when that story broke, and was so pissed because I knew I’d have to address it. We all know it’s bullshit meant to rile up his base and distract from his impeachment. If you didn’t know that, and found yourself at The Skewer, welcome! Please stay. As nice as it would be to make Thanksgiving about something other than revisionist history surrounding Native American genocide, no one is calling for that. That’s the reason fewer people are celebrating Columbus Day.
I was an evangelical Christian a long time ago, and first learned of Chick-fil-A when it served as product placement in a Kirk Cameron vehicle, which I will not call a film, because that would be an insult to the art of cinema greater than the Marvel Universe. If I’d had more money back then, I probably would have been in charge of a Chick-fil-A franchise. My Christmas traditions included a birthday cake for the baby Jesus and complaining about how Christianity was underrepresented, even though it totally wasn’t. I said truly horrible things to gay people. Years after leaving this belief system and all churches behind, I came out to my cousin, and she said she didn’t understand, didn’t agree, but still loved me.
That’s not love! Love is affirming and kind and supportive. It doesn’t tell someone they’re going to hell for something they can’t control. But arguing about that didn’t change my mind. I did not listen to what anyone had to say, especially if it contradicted my religious views. And when I realized I was gay, I was burdened with shame and self-hatred for many years. I know that hearing about the agonizing process that brought me to self-acceptance will make no difference to people who believe their bigotry is ordained by god. Mike Huckabee would probably tell me that I need to pray harder.
I’m glad the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army have less money now, but no one’s mind was changed, and I don’t think anyone’s mind will change. The only reason for this new corporate policy was because the old one finally started to hurt their bottom line. The first Chick-fil-A to open in England only lasted eight days before having to close amid protests. Good.
I will compromise with conservatives when they agree to stop murdering my friends. Until then, I’m content to be the radical extremist that allows Mike Huckabee and Allison Hope to agree on something.
