Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has said he
is prepared to ban Chick-Fil-A restaurants in his city.
The chicken chain is reportedly
scouting locations for its first Boston outlet. One possible
location is just steps from the Freedom Trail, a series of historic
American Revolution sites.
Menino on Thursday pledged to block
Chick-Fil-A's plans over its president's recent comments in
opposition to gay marriage.
“Chick-Fil-A doesn't belong in
Boston,” Menino told The
Boston Herald. “You can't have a business in the city of
Boston that discriminates against a population. We're an open city,
we're a city that's at the forefront of inclusion.”
“That's the Freedom Trail. That's
where it all started right here. And we're not going to have a
company, Chick-Fil-A, or whatever the hell the name is, on our
Freedom Trail.”
Menino said he was preparing a letter
to the company's Atlanta headquarters “telling them my feelings on
the matter.”
“If they need licenses in the city,
it will be very difficult – unless they open up their policies,”
he added.
Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy
unleashed a firestorm of controversy when he said gay marriage is
“inviting God's judgment on our nation.”
Cathy
pivoted in a subsequent interview with San Antonio Fox affiliate
Fox 29, saying “we appreciate everybody” and insisting “we
don't have anti-gay or anti-anything policy or attitude toward
anybody that's out there.”
Between 2003 and 2010, Chick-Fil-A gave
nearly $5 million to groups opposed to gay rights, according to
Equality
Matters.