Newly released tax documents show that Chick-fil-A is still giving money to anti-LGBTQ organizations, years after promising to stop.
Seven years ago, Chick-fil-A’s record of donating to anti-LGBTQ organizations came to light. The fast food chain had donated to the the SPLC-designated hate group Family Research Counsel and the conversion therapy group Exodus International.
CEO Dan Cathy told a newspaper that the company was “guilty as charged” of making anti-LGBTQ donations and said that marriage equality proponents “have the audacity to define what marriage is about” and were “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”
Chick-fil-a has spent years trying to downplay these donations, saying that they “will treat every person equally, regardless of sexual orientation” and that the company’s charity arm “is now taking a much closer look at the organizations it considers helping, and in that process will remain true to its stated philosophy of not supporting organizations with political agendas.”
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But that hasn’t stopped them from donating to anti-LGBTQ organizations.
Related: President Trump served Chick-fil-A to guests in the White House
The 2017 tax returns of the Chick-fil-a Foundation were just made public, and Josh Israel at ThinkProgress found several anti-LGBTQ organizations listed as receiving money: the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) got $1,653,416, the Paul Anderson Youth Home got $6,000, and the Salvation Army got $150,000.
The FCA, an organization founded to spread Christianity through sports that has been accused of enouraging public school coaches to proselytize to athletes, has a “sexual purity statement” that leaders are supposed to follow.
The statement says that marriage is “a covenant between one man and one woman,” that “God intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman,” and that “each person’s gender is determined by biological sex instead of one’s self-perception.”
The FCA’s Statement of Faith also says that marriage is “between one man and one woman as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society.”
The Paul Anderson Youth Home in Atlanta is a Christian organization that says it works with young men who have substance abuse problems or who are otherwise “troubled.”
The organization’s website used to have an article that called homosexuality “evil” and said it was caused by the “sexual, physical, and mental abuse of children.” Another article, which appears to have been deleted, said that the “homosexual behavior and lifestyle” was lawlessness. Another part of the website used to call marriage equality a “rage against Jesus Christ and His values,” although that sentence appears to have been deleted.
The Salvation Army has a history of opposing civil rights legislation for LGBTQ people and has discriminated against transgender people on multiple occasions.
Chick-fil-a defended two of the organizations they donated to but said that they had already decided to stop giving to the Paul Anderson Youth Home after the articles were unearthed.
The company told ThinkProgress that their donation to the FCA was specifically for summer sports camps, although, presumably, the people who work at those programs would have to follow the organization’s Statement of Faith.
Their donation to the Salvation Army, they said, was specifically for children’s programs.
“Since the Chick-fil-A Foundation was created in 2012, our giving has always focused on youth and education. We have never donated with the purpose of supporting a social or political agenda.”
It does not appear that Chick-fil-A donated to any LGBTQ organizations, though.
The tax returns mention a $2500 donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center for “civil/community programming.”
In 2017, the fast food chain came under similar scrutiny for their donations to the same three organizations.
