Chick-fil-A — the Georgia-based fast-food chain whose chief operating officer Dan Cathy has donated millions of dollars to anti-marriage equality organizations through the company’s charitable foundation — announced it’s opening a Boston location this winter at 569 Boylston Street in Copley Square. A sign outside the location is now seeking job applicants for this new site.
Reports NBC-TV 10 Boston:
Once open, the Boston location will join 16 Chick-fil-A locations already operating in Massachusetts. While a handful of those spots are in the Greater Boston area — including Brockton, Burlington, Dedham, Framingham, Peabody and Woburn — this will be the first Chick-fil-A to open within Boston’s city limits. The store’s exact opening date is not yet known.
Former Boston Mayor Tom Menino had vowed to keep Chick-fil-A out of the city due to the CEO’s opposition to same-sex marriage. Following years of protests from LGBTQ groups that have taken issue with the Atlanta-based food chain’s donations to organizations that do not support gay rights, Chick-fil-A announced it would take a different approach to its charitable giving in 2020.
Previous anti-LGBTQ contributions included $994,199 to the Marriage and Family Foundation in 2009 and $1,188,380 in 2010. Contributions also went to the Family Research Council, listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2010, with hundreds of thousands more pouring into groups that support anti-LGBT discrimination as recently as 2016.
Since then, CEO Cathy launched public relations efforts to demonstrate he’d backed off making such donations. But Chick-fil-A remains the darling of radical Christian anti-LGBTQ groups, and Cathy has publicly stated he remains in support of these groups.
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