Battling Real Injustices

Last week the internet was all abuzz with news about Chick-fil-A. Why you should eat there. Why you shouldn’t eat there.

And a fair chunk of talk about why the whole thing didn’t matter.

In her popular post, In the Basement, Jen Hatmaker spoke about retreating from the storm and getting to “the business of loving people and battling real injustices and caring for the poor and loving Jesus.”

I really want this to be enough. But here’s the thing.

For a lot of people, this is a real injustice.

Somewhere up to 40% of all homeless youth identify as LGBT, and of those, almost 80% left because their families rejected them when they came out.

That’s a real injustice.

There are more than 1100 federal benefits denied to same-sex couples.

That’s a real injustice.

LGBT youth are five times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers.

That’s a real injustice.

I want to be very clear: eating or not eating a chicken sandwich will not change these things. 

But hurtful language contributes. It allows parents of gay kids to feel vindicated in their decision to exercise “tough love.” It allows people to feel justified in putting their lesbian neighbor’s relationship up for a vote when they would not want their own marriage placed on a ballot. It allows people to shift blame to the young person who just needed to toughen up in the face of rejection and bullying.

If this isn’t a real issue, then why the vast amounts of money spent to pass Proposition 8? If it’s not a real issue, then why is God going to judge our nation so severely if gay marriage becomes legal? If it’s not a real issue, then why the fear about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

These are conversations that we need to have. They’re not easy, but they matter. To people of all different opinions, they matter. And to the people who are directly affected by these opinions, they definitely matter.

But sometimes we need to find common ground first. To see where we agree before we work through the areas where we disagree.

In Jen’s post, she noted that poverty is a “real injustice.” I agree with that 100%. I would say that all of my readers, whether or not they agree with my views regarding homosexuality or marriage equality, agree that poverty is problematic and that we should do something about it.

Several times I’ve written about Nuru International.

I would like us to stop talking about real injustice and go ahead and do something. Right now.

Mike Huckabee is asking people to eat at Chick-fil-A on August 1st to show support of their stance on traditional marriage. I’ve seen folks suggest eating at McDonald’s (I guess because they have a far inferior, but similarly named chicken sandwich?) if you oppose Dan Cathy’s comments.

How about a third option?

Why don’t we take the $5-10 we were going to spend on a fast food lunch and donate it to this group that is helping people lift themselves out of poverty? Maybe we can decide to eat some pre-chicken (read: eggs, since most of us have those at home) on Wednesday and rather than making a statement of disagreement, we can use our money to make the statement that together, we support ending the cycle of poverty.

I’ve donated $25 to get us started off. Because it can be very easy for me to worry about making a statement rather than having a conversation.

We can still have a conversation without making statements. 

We can battle a lot of real injustices.

Let’s go ahead and start with one we can all agree on.

Click here to donate.

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Let’s use the comments today to write something that we can all agree about. I want us to have conversations about the places where we disagree, but today, let’s find some common ground.