Chick-Fil-A has record sales, now faces LGBT lawsuits

The battle over gay rights included comments from Chick-Fil-A COO Dan Cathy which has embroiled the company into boycotts and protests.

Chick-Fil-A cow toy photo/Phroziac via wikimedia commons

Customers lined up, some patiently waiting for hours, to show their support for the restaurant on what former Gov. Mike Huckabee declared “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” on Wednesday.

“It’s gone beyond anything I could have imagined,” Huckabee told Fox News. “Every one of (the stores) that I know have reported record, historic sales yesterday. … A lot of the stores ran out of chicken before the end of the day.”

Chicago Phoenix reports that LGBT groups are filing multiple complaints with the Illinois Department of Human Rights alleging that the Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A restaurant chain’s “intolerant corporate culture” violates Illinois law and a provision in the state’s Human Rights Act.

“In our current high speed media and social media environment, Chick-fil-A has announced and caused to be published, to hundreds of millions of people, that LGBT people are unacceptable and objectionable,” said Jacob Meister, Governing Board President of TCRA and the attorney who filed the complaint. “They have made it clear the lives of LGBT individuals are unacceptable to them and that same-gender families are unwelcome at Chick-fil-A.”

Anthony Martinez, executive director of TCRA, contends that Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy’s recent comments reiterating his opposition to same-sex marriage were more than just his own thoughts and that he was speaking on behalf of his company, stating the views as company policy.

“We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that,” Cathy said in the Baptist Press July 16. He said he was “guilty as charged” for supporting “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

His comments make LGBT people, a protected minority class, feel “unwelcome, objectionable or unacceptable” at Chick-fil-A restaurants, or “public accommodations” under Section 5-102(B) of the Illinois Human Rights Act, Martinez said.