« Go back a post || Return to G-A-Y homepage || Haul tail to next post »
10/31/2014
'Weekly Standard' asst. editor equates Tim Cook with man who pits God against him
Jim Swift, assistant editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, thinks Tim Cook, in coming out as a proud gay man, sounds just like another newsmaking company leader:
A southern-born CEO invoking religion regarding his views on homosexuality, lobbying for what he believes in, and using his company to financially and publicly support those views?Indeed, we have a heard a story like this before.
Before Tim Cook, this perfectly described another CEO and son of the south: Daniel Truett Cathy of Chick-fil-A.
Apple CEO Sure Sounds a Lot Like Chick-fil-A CEO [Weekly Standard]
Ooh, totally! Except, you know, for the fact that in his now infamous words, Dan Cathy voiced a view that accused Tim Cook's love life of bringing forth the judgement of God:
DAN CATHY, president and COO of Chick-fil-A:"It's very clear in Romans chapter 1, if we look at society today, we see all the twisted up kind of stuff that's going on. Washington trying to redefine the definition of marriage and all the other kinds of things that we go—if you go upstream from that, in Romans chapter 1, you will see that because we have not acknowledged God and because we have not thanked God, that we have been left victim to the foolishness of our own thoughts, and as result, we are suffering the consequences of a society and culture who has not acknowledged God or not thanked God—he's left us to a deprived mind. It's tragic and we live in a culture of that today.""AUDIO SOURCE: Dan Cathy event at Hope Community Church [Vimeo]
DAN CATHY: (1:05)"…I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about"AUDIO SOURCE: Dan Cathy [Ken Coleman Show]
I mean, I guess you can technically say that both men are just expressing their religious views about God and life and humans and what it all means. But if you're going to strip merit out of the equation, you could just as fairly add Westboro Baptist, extremist jihadists, fringe cult separatists, earth-worshiping communes, self-determined deities, or any number of faith-driven folks to that same mix. People do, in fact, say things and then add the word "God" to those sentences.
But when you add merit back into the picture, things shift a bit. When you consider the value of the two views expressed by the two CEOs, you get diametrically opposed ideas: one that encourages acceptance of millions human beings that happen to be part of the spectrum of normalcy and one that suggests all those millions of people are making God angry, judgement, and ultimately Armageddon-ish. It's totally fine to rally behind either one of those ideas. But let's not pretend these two positions mean the same thing.