Teaching Tolerance
July 27, 2012 by Bob Livingston
Progressives are tolerant people. Just ask them.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino says Chick-fil-A “doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says, “Chic-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values.”
Boston has 10 violent crimes per 1,000 residents. Massachusetts’ violent crime rate is half that. Boston’s unemployment rate was 6 percent in June, but the city had shed 2,600 jobs that month. The city’s poverty rate is 21.1 percent. In many communities, 85 percent of families are headed by a single parent — usually the mother — and at least 20 percent of adults have no high school diploma. About 42 percent of children in those communities live in poverty, the densest cluster of childhood poverty in the State, according to a study sponsored by the Boston Foundation.
Chicago has 10.54 violent crimes per 1,000 residents compared to 4.35 per 1,000 in the rest of Illinois. Chicago’s unemployment rate is 9.8 percent. The city’s poverty rate is 27.5 percent. The city is in the grips of a gang war. City police say there are at least 100,000 gang members. At least 275 people have been killed this year and many more injured in gang violence — many of them innocent bystanders like 7-year-old Heaven Sutton and 10-year-old Kitanna Peterson.
Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy said in an interview with the Baptist Press: “[A]s an organization we can operate on biblical principles. So that is what we claim to be. [We are] based on biblical principles, asking God and pleading with God to give us wisdom on decisions we make about people and the programs and partnerships we have. And He has blessed us.”
In a radio interview, Cathy said: “As it relates to society in general, I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’”
There is no evidence that Chick-fil-A has discriminated against anyone in hiring or service. No one has claimed such. The owner simply said he ran his business based on biblical principles, and expressed his opinion — again based on his biblical beliefs — that marriage should be between a man and woman.
But Menino and Emanuel don’t believe Christian values are Boston or Chicago values. If you look at what goes on there, obviously that’s the case. It’s also telling that Emanuel yesterday welcomed Louis Farrakhan and his “army” into the city, ignoring Farrakhan’s history of racism and anti-Semitism.
Like most big government statists, Menino and Emanuel are tolerant — as long as you agree with them. Perhaps that’s why their cities are shrinking, crime-infested dens of corruption.
Chick-fil-A, on the other hand, is doing quite well despite “tolerant” people like Menino and Emanuel. It employs about 50,000 workers across the country at 1,500 outlets in 40 States. It has more than $4 billion in annual revenues.
You wouldn’t want any of that coming your way, would you, Mayors?
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