School Board Openly Attacks Chick-fil-A by Passing an Absurd Resolution
The Pittsburgh school board has passed a resolution banning official participation in a running event sponsored by Chick-fil-A — apparently putting preening political correctness above legitimate concerns like encouraging a healthy lifestyle for children and preventing childhood obsety.
According to KDKA-TV, the board voted last week on the resolution to prohibit involvement in the Pittsburgh Kids Marathon and Kids of Steel Program because they say that the chain supports anti-gay causes.
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Wednesday’s vote was unanimous.
The school district has sponsored a team in the past to take part in the Kids Marathon, a one-mile race that takes place the day before the Pittsburgh Marathon. The district is apparently not going to do that this year, but beyond that, the impact of the resolution is open to question.
“Nothing in this resolution is intended to interfere with an individual employee’s right or the rights of students and their families to participate in these programs and races on an individual basis unrelated to the District or the District schools,” it reads.
That means that if individual students or employees wanted to participate in the Kids Marathon next May, they could do so — just not with the official sanction of the Pittsburgh schools, it seems.
The Chick-fil-A sponsorship of the PIttsburgh Marathon has drawn other protests from gay and lesbian activist groups, but the school board’s action seems to have been decided without the board even reaching out to the organizers of the Pittsburgh Marathon.
When KDKA’s Jon Delano asked Marathon CEO Patrice Matamoros whether anyone from the school district had talked to them about Chick-fil-A’s sponsorship of the race, she said, “No. Nobody’s reached out to us.”
“The school board passes a resolution about the marathon, and they’ve never talked to you?” Delano asked.
“No,” Matamoros responded.
The school board members seemed hazy again on why they were passing the resolution.
Chick-fil-A has “several beliefs, which they’ve expressed officially, largely through religious basis, that are quite discriminatory and are quite inconsistent with the district’s policies regarding discrimination on the basis of gender, race, etc.,” Ira Weiss, the school board solicitor, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Pittsburgh City Council member Erika Strassburger, meanwhile, told the Post-Gazette that the very name Chick-fil-A “would be perceived to espouse bigotry and hate.”
“This is really about the children and about sending the message to the children of Pittsburgh, and really to everyone, that Pittsburgh, as far as city council is concerned, is welcoming and inclusive for everyone,” Strassburger said.
While Strassburger and council President Bruce Kraus met with the marathon organizers and said their conversation was productive, according to the Post-Gazette, school board members apparently didn’t do the same.
There’s also the fact that the alleged homophobia in question here involves Chick-fil-A executives opposing same-sex marriage and donating to political organizations that also oppose it. The chain’s avowedly Christian roots have made it a regular target of homosexual activists.
In the face of the Pittsburgh controversy, the chain issued a statement disavowing bigotry of any kind.
“Our restaurants welcome everyone, and we have no policy of discrimination against any group,” the statement read. “We do not have a political or social agenda.”
No, but even the appearance of standing up for Judeo-Christian values in any way, shape or form is apparently tantamount to discrimination to the American left in 2018. Mind you, there were no actual discussions between the school board and organizers of the race — much less Chick-fil-A — which makes this appear to be a public relations move more than anything else.
So, again, who does this really affect? Well, according to race organizers,”that the schools’ stand hurts city children whom the Marathon wants to train in healthy running and nutrition,” according to KDKA.
“We have 150 different schools involved in our program in 13 different counties,” Matamoris told the station.
Apparently, fighting childhood obesity — another bugaboo of the left (and a far more deserving one, we might add) — isn’t as important as simply appearing to be politically correct, all without concrete consequence.
Absurd is the word.
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