Friendship across the divide Bridging a vast chasm

Last year, it definitely wasn’t chicken people tasted in their mouths when they heard the name Chick-fil-A. It was something far more bitter. Calls for boycotts rang across the country and the place where people ate lunch was suddenly indicative of their views on gay marriage.

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Last year, it definitely wasn’t chicken people tasted in their mouths when they heard the name Chick-fil-A. It was something far more bitter. Calls for boycotts rang across the country and the place where people ate lunch was suddenly indicative of their views on gay marriage.

Chick-fil-A’s association with and financial backing of anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) organizations became the topic of intense furor and emotion, sparking a vicious divide between those for and against the redefinition of marriage. President and Chief Operating Officer Dan Cathy took center stage in the controversy, acknowledging that his company did indeed support these groups.

It got very ugly and was yet another example of the deep fault line dividing our country. It wasn’t just that, though: It again revealed the ugliness and the hatred lurking behind this and other such debates. Eating or not eating “mor chikin” branded you irrevocably. Some suggest this is why we should all be vegetarians in the first place. But that’s a different story.

Regardless of where you stood on the controversy, it was blatantly obvious there was little room for dialogue, and this is nothing new. In the midst of the divisiveness, I wished I could find examples of loving, supportive, kind—or at the very least, respectful—conversations. Because as much as we want to demonize people with opposing views and see them as soulless, they’re not. They’re our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and best friends.

Recently, I saw evidence of two souls finding each other in the most unlikely way. I had the privilege of reading an inspired article in The Huffington Post written by gay activist Shane Windmeyer, founder and executive director of Campus Pride, “the leading national organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and ally college students.” The article’s title: “Dan and Me: My Coming Out as a Friend of Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A.”

Windmeyer was “coming out in a new way”—claiming a friendship with the man who started the whole controversy. A man who, as Windmeyer put it, would ensure “my husband of 18 years and I would never be legally married.”

Windmeyer asked all the expected questions: “How could I dare think to have a relationship with a man and a company that have advocated against who I am; who would take apart my family in the name of ‘traditional marriage’; whose voice and views represented exactly the opposite of those of the students for whom I advocate every day? Dan is the problem, and Chick-fil-A is the enemy, right?” The rest of the article traced his journey of discovering that perhaps it wasn’t that easy.

He discussed how, for years, Campus Pride protested the presence of Chick-fil-A on campuses across the country and how his own research uncovered $5 million of the company’s funding of anti-LGBT groups. What he knew of its COO, he didn’t like.

So, when Cathy called him, out of the blue, he wasn’t sure he wanted to take the call. But he did, and amazingly, their first conversation led to “a series of deeper conversations” and then a “number of in-person meetings…[Cathy] had never before had such dialogue with any member of the LGBT community. It was awkward at times but always genuine and kind.”

Unlike so many other experiences, Windmeyer was amazed that Cathy’s agenda was not to make sure his opinion and deep-rooted beliefs were heard. Instead, he “sought first to understand, not to be understood.” He even acknowledged that he hadn’t realized how the company’s actions would affect people, expressing genuine sadness for those who had been hurt “in the name of Chick-fil-A.”

The men struck up a friendship, learning about each other’s families and spending many hours listening to one another. They looked for what common ground they did have and tried to “build respect no matter what.”

Windmeyer admitted that neither he nor Cathy would change their beliefs but that they could “continue to listen, learn and appreciate ‘the blessing of growth’ that happens when we know each other better.”

I thought to myself: What would it be like if we all knew each other and experienced this “blessing of growth”?