I stand for freedom.

I’ve heard a lot of opposing views on the chicken debate and before going into mine, I’d like to preface it with my views on gay marriage.

I am a Libertarian. I don’t believe the government has any business in marriage, but unfortunately, with our current tax code, marriage is a federal institution. On the flip side, religion has no business in government. Therefore, I believe in government unions and religious marriage. If gays want to get married in a church, that’s something they’re going to have to take up with the church and its congregants. I don’t believe in this “support gay marriage” nonsense, because passing gay marriage state-by-state is only addressing the symptom, not the disease. The disease is in the tax code. The disease is that the government is intimately involved in a holy union between two people. The only way to eliminate this breach of separation of church and state is to rewrite the tax code, and let the churches, and the churches alone, perform a marriage.

So the hundreds of people that yell and berate me every day — calling me bigoted, racist, redneck, ignorant, uneducated — are simply just ignoring the fact that I am a Libertarian, and I do not subscribe to legalizing “gay marriage” as it is termed. The gays are simply addressing the wrong issue if they truly want freedom.

This brings me to my stance on the Chick-fil-A debate. I never said a word when CEO Dan Cathy expressed his views on gay marriage. The fast-food chain shuts down on Sundays for crying out loud, I don’t think it was ever any question what its doctrine was. I also never said a word when the left-of-center chomped at the bit to criticize the company and attempt to launch a boycott. This is the very essence of America. Fight the speech you don’t like with more speech. Beautiful stuff. I applaud it.

But then the politicians got involved. First, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino vowed to keep the franchise out of his city, then Chicago alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno moved to ban the restaurants, then New York City Councillor Christine Quinn moved to ban it, and then — and here’s the real kicker — Rahm Emanuel speaks out in support of Moreno, saying Chick-fil-A’s values “are not Chicago values.”

Then Rahm goes on to summon the Jew-hating, whites-bashing, UFO-citing Louis Farrakhan to put on his cape and swoop into Chicago to help fight crime. So, Farrakhan, a man who has repeatedly called Hitler a “great man” and Judaism a “gutter religion” represents “Chicago values,” but those Christian, conservative, chicken-eaters better get the cluck out.

This Chick-fil-A debate really has nothing to do with gay marriage for me, though I’m sure it does for some. This debate is about the freedom to express freely from the right. We are conservatives for a reason. We don’t use our children as human shields, we don’t get pepper sprayed in mass droves, we don’t defecate on the American flag, we don’t chain ourselves to fences and we don’t protest just about everything on the planet there is to protest. We aren’t represented in the media because we aren’t obnoxious enough. Fine by me.

But today, I saw something take place on the internet that I’ve never seen before. I saw unity. I even heard from a subscriber that people were singing “God Bless America” while waiting hours on end to help support their local franchise. Another subscriber told me that him and his fellow congregants ordered an ungodly amount of food, only to donate it to their nearest homeless shelter. We had finally gotten it: Our freedom of speech is under attack, and our weapon of choice is kindness and unrelenting protection of our freedom.

The left tends to boil everything in politics down to racism, bigotry and hate. These are classic scare tactics for the media to get you to shut up. To people on the left, freedom of speech only applies when they agree with it.

big·ot·ry [big-uh-tree]
noun, plural big·ot·ries.
1. stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own.
2. the actions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., of a bigot.

Make no mistake, this debate is not just about protecting the freedom of speech. This debate is about protecting the freedom of religion. Rush Limbaugh said it best when he said this Chick-fil-A boycott “is an attack on Christianity.” Liberals would pay no mind if Muslims built a mosque on every street corner of their neighborhood. But this is a private company that operates via franchises owned and operated by small business people and families, many of faith.

The First Amendment is not up for debate, fellow patriots. It is our very last bastion of hope if we’re going to keep this country the best nation on earth. We cannot compromise on this Amendment, for the Fathers made it our first for a very deliberate reason. It was the defining Amendment that liberated us wholly from the British. This Chick-fil-A mudslinging is an attack on your faith. It is an attack on God.

We knew it was coming, and today was the day we chose to fight back. I’ve never seen so much support for anything in my life, and I’ve never been more proud. If this is any indication of what November will look like, Obama better start packing his golf clubs.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.