In a Facebook post Tuesday morning, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, lamented Chick-fil-A’s decision to stop giving money to Christian charities that have come under fire from LGBT advocates.
The two leading charities no longer receiving funds from the Chick-fil-A Foundation are the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA).
“We made multi-year commitments to both organizations and we fulfilled those obligations in 2018,” a spokeswoman for Chick-fil-A told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Reuters broke the story on Monday.
The FCA’s statement of faith says, “We believe God’s design for sexual intimacy is to be expressed only within the context of marriage. God instituted marriage between one man and one woman as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society. For this reason, we believe that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman. (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5-6; Mark 10:6-9; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9)”
“The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is not only a good organization, but it positively impacts our state in many ways,” Tuberville wrote on Facebook. “The FCA’s primary mission is to grow faith in young athletes. What a shame it is that our Christianity is under attack. ”
The FCA has not publicly commented on Chick-fil-A’s decision.
The Salvation Army, famous for its bell-ringing holiday volunteers, has long come under fire from LGBT activists. The organization has a history of supporting the biblical definition of marriage, and at one point, more than five years ago, it had links to gay conversion therapy on its website.
In recent years, the Salvation Army has publicly promoted their acceptance of LGBT Americans. The group issued a statement to Reuters, saying, “We serve more than 23 million individuals a year, including those in the LGBTQ+ community.”
With his comments, Tuberville joins other figures on the right expressing disappointment with Chick-fil-A’s decision. Both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee voiced their displeasure on with Chick-fil-A’s decision on Twitter.
Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: henry@new-yhn.local or on Twitter @HenryThornton95
