Mayor Bloomberg: Chick-fil-A Ban Is ‘Inappropriate’
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Michael Loccisano/FilmMagic(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have a bone to pick with jumbo-sized sodas, but he has no qualms with Chick-fil-A.
While his fellow mayors in San Francisco, Chicago and Boston have shunned the chicken sandwich chain from their cities for anti-gay marriage comments its CEO made this week, Bloomberg said Friday that a similar ban in New York City is “not going to happen.”
“I disagree with them really strongly on this one,” Bloomberg said on WOR Radio. “You can’t have a test for what the owners’ personal views are before you decide to give a permit to do something in the city. You really don’t want to ask political beliefs or religious beliefs before you issue a permit. That’s just not government’s job.”
“This is just a bad idea and it’s not going to happen in New York City,” Bloomberg added.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino was the first mayor to come out against Chick-fil-a after the restaurant’s CEO Dan Cathy said this month that he was “guilty as charged” for supporting “the biblical definition of the family unit.” Menino wrote a scathing letter to Cathy last Friday urging him to keep his restaurant out of Boston.
Days later Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel followed suit, saying he does not believe Cathy’s comments “reflects who we are as a city.”
San Francisco became the third city to turn a cold shoulder on Chick-fil-A when Mayor Edwin Lee tweeted his distaste for the company’s anti-gay stance on Thursday.
“Very disappointed #ChickFilA doesn’t share San Francisco’s values & strong commitment to equality for everyone,” Lee tweeted, adding in a subsequent tweet, “Closest #ChickFilA to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer.”
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