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Chick-Fil-A appreciation day sets sales record

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Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day sets sales record
Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day sets sales record

From the Los Angeles Times.

Excerpt:

Chick-fil-A appears to have set a company record in sales on Wednesday, a day on which Americans were encouraged to show their support for the fast-food restaurant whose leadership has drawn both criticism and praise in recent weeks for its opposition to same-sex marriage.

The privately held company declined to give specific sales figures but released a statement to the Los Angeles Times confirming that frenzied sales of chicken sandwiches and cross-cut waffle fries had made for a record-setting day.

“We are very grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers on August 1 at Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country,” said Steve Robinson, executive vice president of marketing, in the statement. “While we don’t release exact sales numbers, we can confirm reports that it was a record-setting day.”

[…]Robinson said the Atlanta-based company was “grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers” who showed up at outlets in droves coast-to-coast. Customers often waited in long lines, many weathering the blistering summer sun, just to get in the front door.

Such images — as well as those of crowded Chick-fil-A counters and long lines of cars snaking through the drive-thru lanes — created a social media frenzy on Wednesday as they were shared and reshared on a variety of platforms, including Twitter.

The images suggested that sales were indeed going gangbusters, and confirmation of those suspicions arrived when Orange County Pastor Rick Warren tweeted a snippet of a conversation he’d had with Dan Cathy, president of the popular fast-food chain:

@DanCathy just called me. #ChickFilA has already set a world record today, with 7 more hrs to go in the West. #OutOfChicken”

The company, which proudly abides by Bible-based principles and closes its doors to sales on Sundays, stressed in its statement that Chick-fil-A did not promote Wednesday’s turnout.

It also stressed that its employees abide by a service tradition to “treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.”

But not everyone is happy about the protests. Here is an example taken from Sooper Mexican:

This sort of thing happens often, actually.

Why is it that everyone is so angry with people who express a pro-marriage point of view? I think the problem is that militant secularists are very focused on hedonism in this life. They cannot ground objective morality, including human rights such as the right to free speech. They have no notion of an after-life, so they are trying pack in as much happiness as they can. Their purpose in life is not to form their own character in this life, so they can be rightly related to God. They want to be selfish and they want to be celebrated by others for it.

Often, militant atheists know nothing at all about Christianity and why Christians hold to their positions. This makes them even more intolerant of Christians who act like Christians in public and who participate in politics, like the abolitionists or pro-life activists. These people have never sat through a formal academic debate, and they have never heard the arguments for God’s existence and Christianity in particular. They don’t want to listen, they just want to shame Christians and smash the windows of their businesses and put them into prisons until there is no one left to call their selfishness into question.

People who supported Chick-Fil-A were protesting this coercion and censorship by the secular left. They were saying, “you can’t use the law and the government to take away my freedom to speak out in protest of things like slavery, abortion and redefining marriage”. It’s ironic that everyone is always accusing Christians of hypocrisy, and yet when we are authentic in public, they try to coerce us into acting like non-Christians!

I noticed that Gay Patriot, a well-known gay Republican and supporter of gay marriage, was out with his partner to Chick-Fil-A. He got some Chick-Fil-A food, and spent some time talking to the pro-marriage Chick-Fil-A customers. And everyone was nice to him. He is not a militant secularist – he thinks that everyone should be able to participate in defining policy and not be discriminated against for their views. No one who went to Chick-Fil-A was protesting Gay Patriot’s freedom to do what he pleases in his own life. We were protesting the government’s use of force to silence and coerce those who don’t want to have marriage redefined for the whole society. And we can defend our view using a variety of secular reasons, too, if anyone is interested.

News

Chinese Communist Party members increasingly attending church

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

More Communist Party members in the Peoples Republic of China are attending church, according to the U.S. State Department’s latest report on International Religious Freedom.

“Although CCP members are required to be atheists and generally are discouraged from participating in religious activities, their attendance at official church services in Guangdong Province was reportedly growing, as authorities increasingly chose to turn a blind eye to their attendance,” the report stated.

Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who authored the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, backed up claims that more Chinese Communists as well as members of the media are becoming Christians, despite continuing religious repression in China.

“It is definitely taking place around the country,” Wolf told CNSNews.com. “There’s a large number of Chinese who have become Christian, there are a number of people in the government and even some in the media who have become Christians.”

[…]The International Religious Freedom Report, released on July 30, also noted that in 2011, there was a “marked deterioration” of religious freedom in China.

The report discussed the persecution of religious groups, including Christians, Uighur Muslims, Catholics and Tibetan Buddhists:

“Some religious and spiritual groups are outlawed. Tibetan Buddhists in China are not free to venerate the Dalai Lama and encounter severe government interference in religious practice,” the report said.

“The government continued to severely repress Muslims living in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and other parts of China. Crackdowns on Christian house churches, such as the Shouwang church in Beijing, continued.”

The report also noted that Chinese authorities broke up Christmas and Easter celebrations and designated many Christian groups as “evil cults.” Authorities also detained numerous Uighur Muslims without bothering to discern between peaceful worship and criminal activity.

Many Catholic clergymen who remain loyal to the Vatican instead of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) also have been detained by the Communist regime.

[…]The Chinese constitution permits the citizenry to hold religious beliefs, but restricts the practicing and worship of religion to “normal religious activities”—a term that is left undefined by the constitution.

Since 1999, China has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

What’s striking to be is how similar the views of the repressive Chinese government are to the views of many atheists in the West. In China, even religious people have to act like atheists in public. It’s an atheist paradise. It reminds me a little of what is happening here with Obamacare and religious institutions being forced to provide abortion-inducing drugs against their consciences.

News

Obamacare subsidizes the risky behaviors of sexually active women

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

 Starting August 1, the Democrats’ health care law — as implemented by the Health and Human Services Administration — entitles 47 million women to eight new “prevention-related” health care services “without paying more out of their own pocket,” HHS reminded Americans on Tuesday.

In addition to the controversial contraceptive mandate, HHS says virtually all health plans must cover– at no charge — the following items for sexually active women.

— HIV screening and counseling: “Sexually-active women will have access to annual counseling on HIV,” HHS said, noting that women are at increased risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

— Counseling on sexually transmitted infections: “Sexually-active women will have access to annual counseling on sexually transmitted infections,” HHS said. “These sessions have been shown to reduce risky behavior in patients, yet only 28 percent of women aged 18-44 years reported that they had discussed STIs with a doctor or nurse.”

— HPV (human papillomavirus): This sexually transmitted disease is linked to cervical cancer. According to HHS, “Women who are 30 or older will have access to high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing every three years, regardless of Pap smear results.”

— Interpersonal and domestic violence screening: “Screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic violence should be provided for all adolescent and adult women,” HHS says. “An estimated 25% of women in the United States report being targets of intimate partner violence during their lifetimes. Screening is effective in the early detection and effectiveness of interventions to increase the safety of abused women.”

— Contraceptive coverage: The HHS regulation requires nearly all health insurance plans to provide women with sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including emergency contraception, without any fees or co-pay.

It is a major priority of the Obama administration: making it easier for women to have casual recreational sex with people outside of marriage. Sometimes, this recreational sex will result in increased sickness and disease, and sometimes this recreational sex will result in unplanned pregancies. But no matter – the taxpayers are there to pick up the tab for these activities. After all, “the private sector is fine” and business owners and workers “didn’t build that”, so it’s no problem at all to “spread the wealth around” from job creators and workers to pay for these expenses. And it has the added benefit of buying votes. Not only that, but Planned Parenthood will make generous donations to the Democrat Party in exchange for all the new business they’ll get.