Rahm
Emanuel and Thomas Menino, mayors of Chicago and Boston, made this
political. And now the people of this country, I'm gonna tell you,
you're looking at a microcosm of what's gonna happen on November 6th.
You're looking at a microcosm of the Tea Party. You are seeing that
great silent majority, or the sleeping giant that our first caller
talked about. We have these commercials we do for FreedomWorks,
people want to do more than vote. They want to get involved. They
want to let everybody know how they feel and in what numbers they exist,
and this is the latest opportunity they've got, and they are utilizing
it. Literally e-mails out the wazoo today talking about quarter mile
long lines. My cousin Andy in St. Louis sent me a picture of a
Chick-fil-A in Des Peres, outside St. Louis, of jammed parking lots,
traffic jams, people waiting. Other stories about Chick-fil-A someplace
ran out of breakfast at nine o'clock and immediately started serving
lunch.
CALLER:
I burst out laughing. It was packed. There was a line out the door
that was unbelievable. Cars trying to get it from the Ward Parkway
side, the state line side, the 86th Street side, from the Target parking
lot. It was just hilarious. And I thought, this is so wonderful
because there's been no media attention, and it's great that
conservatives are able to get out there and say we have a voice.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
[Chicago Alderman] Proco “Joe” Moreno announced this week that he will block Chick-fil-A’s effort to build its second Chicago store … following company President Dan Cathy’s remarks last week that he was “guilty as charged” for supporting the biblical definition of marriage as between a man and woman….The alderman has the ideological support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.“Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values,” the mayor said in a statement when asked about Moreno’s decision. “They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents. This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”Moreno is relying on a rarely violated Chicago tradition known as aldermanic privilege, which dictates that City Council members defer to the opinion of the ward alderman on local issues. Last year Moreno wielded that weapon to block plans for a Wal-Mart in his ward, saying he had issues with the property owner and that Wal-Mart was not “a perfect fit for the area.” …In Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino reportedly took a similar view:
The alderman, serving his first full term, dismissed any First Amendment concerns.
“You have the right to say what you want to say, but zoning is not a right,” he said, adding that he also had concerns about traffic in the area….
Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from bringing its Southern-fried fast-food empire to Boston … after the family-owned firm’s president suggested gay marriage is “inviting God’s judgment on our nation.”But denying a private business permits because of such speech by its owner is a blatant First Amendment violation. Even when it comes to government contracting — where the government is choosing how to spend government money — the government generally may not discriminate based on the contractor’s speech, see Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr (1996). It is even clearer that the government may not make decisions about how people will be allowed to use their own property based on the speaker’s past speech.
And this is so even if there is no statutory right to a particular kind of building permit (and I don’t know what the rule is under Illinois law). Even if the government may deny permits to people based on various reasons, it may not deny permits to people based on their exercise of his First Amendment rights. It doesn’t matter if the applicant expresses speech that doesn’t share the government officials’ values, or even the values of the majority of local citizens. It doesn’t matter if the applicant’s speech is seen as “disrespect[ful]” of certain groups. The First Amendment generally protects people’s rights to express such views without worrying that the government will deny them business permits as a result. That’s basic First Amendment law — but Alderman Moreno, Mayor Menino, and, apparently, Mayor Emanuel (if his statement is quoted in context), seem to either not know or not care about the law... (continued)
Last Valentine's day, Feb 14, Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral offered married couples a chance to celebrate their spousal fidelity by renewing their vows to each other during Mass. Yet in order to do so, couples had to pass through an angry crowd of "gay rights" protestors who marched by the steps of the cathedral, accusing Church hierarchy of hatred toward gays and telling parishioners to "stop funding the bigots!"
Police refused to interrupt the demonstration, despite laws that prohibit protesting near places of worship while services are ongoing.
Chicago lawyer Nora Doherty, who was present during the demonstration, recounted via Renew America's Matt Abbot how "one of the particularly angry protesters yelled at my three-year-old daughter, 'Little girl, I hope you grow up to be gay so that your mother will disown you and you can know how I feel!’”
