Allen Smith, Tiffany Ford, center, and Ashley Marion join gay rights groups outside the Decatur, Ga., Chick-fil-A restaurant Friday, Aug. 3, 2012. Gay rights activists plan kiss demonstrations at Chick-fil-A stores Friday, just days after the company set a sales record when customers flocked to the restaurants to show support for the fast-food chain owner's opposition to gay marriage. (AP Photo/David Tulis)
Meanwhile, police were investigating graffiti at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Southern California. The graffiti on the side of a restaurant in Torrance said "Tastes like hate" and had a picture of a cow. No one has been arrested.
The Rome News-Tribune sent a reporter to both Chick-fil-A locations in Rome during lunchtime and there was no evidence of a protest on Friday.
The flap began last month when Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy told a religious publication that the company backed "the biblical definition of a family" and later said: "''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.'"
The statement infuriated gay marriage supporters, who planned the so-called kiss-in protests. To counter that demonstration, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and Fox News talk show host, declared Wednesday a Chick-fil-A appreciation day.
The Cathy family has never hid its Southern Baptist faith, even closing its restaurants on Sundays.
Julie Romano, an organizer at the Decatur, Ga., store just outside Atlanta said she thinks Cathy "is operating with cafeteria-style religion and a lot of people, extremist like him are, they pick and choose what it is they want to believe."
"As my sign said, Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. And Christianity is about loving people."
If they would do the same as their supporters did and organize a day when they would go in large groups to their local Chick-Fil-A and order nothing but either a free water or the lowest costing item on the menu and then proceed to drink/eat that product there taking as much time as possible it would show up in the stores profits. No need to picket, kiss or march with signs. Hit them where they will notice it the most, their profits.
The local Drawf House here in Rome is usually packed on Sat mornings with people eating their breakfast buffet. If a group of pro gay marriage supporters were to fill the store for most of sat morning it would surely cut into their profits. Something like this would have to be done peacefully and without incident though. Go into the store and wait to be seated like any other customer, when the server comes to take your order take as much time as u can before placing your order. Then as i said, only order the cheapest things on the menu such as a soda, cup of coffee etc... Then take as much time as you normally would to eat a meal to consume whatever it is that you ordered. By doing this will u "tie up" the tables. Your average person or group of people doesnt like having to wait a long time to be seated when they go somewhere to eat and most will go somewhere else when faced with a long wait time to be seated. So instead of them having 300 -400 people spending an average of $7.00 to $10.00 they would have that many only spending a faction of that. One thing to remember though is that the servers work mostly off from tips so you would need to be fair to them and leave them the same amount they would have normally got had you ordered a regular meal. By leaving them cash the money would be going directly into their pockets and not into the company's.
Another thing would be not to argue if asked to leave or cause any other kind of problem. I'm sure at some point the managers will get frustrated and start asking people to leave which will then show their true colors about serving GBLT supporters. If confronted by someone just tell them you are exercising your 1st amendment rights.
At the stores that do not have a large dinning area the same could be done at the drive thru. "Tie up" the drive thru by placing orders for the cheapest things on the menu and take your time getting thru the line. There again people will choose to go elsewhere if faced with a long line.
The only way for something like this to work is for everyone to be respectful and peaceful. But you also would need to be a "paying" customers just like anyone else, just one who is spending a lot less than the supporters.
It's a little asinine to insist an individual observe your freedom of speech while you're infringing on their property rights, don't you think?
Oh, wait. This is exactly the mentality these "activists" have - enforcing tolerance through intolerance.