UK’s first Chick-fil-A says it will close just 8 days after opening thanks to LGBT rights group

It was announced this Friday — just eight days after opening — that the first and only Chick-fil-A restaurant in the UK will close, thanks to a campaign waged by an LGBT rights group over the company’s alleged anti-LGBT stance, the BBC reports.

The Oracle shopping mall in Reading, south England, announced that it would not renew the fast food restaurant’s six-month lease, telling the BBC that it was the “right thing to do.”

“We always look to introduce new concepts for our customers, however, we have decided on this occasion that the right thing to do is to only allow Chick-fil-A to trade with us for the initial six-month pilot period, and not to extend the lease any further,” an Oracle spokesperson said.

Despite the announcement, a protest organized by an LGBT rights group will go ahead this Saturday. According to Reading Pride, Chick-fil-A’s “ethos and moral stance towards #LGBTQ people goes completely against our values, and that of the UK.”

In a 2012 interview, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy said that the company supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

“We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives,” Cathy said. “We give God thanks for that … We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families.”

In 2017, ThinkProgress reported that the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave over $1.6 million to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which requires employees to agree to a “sexual purity” clause that forbids “homosexual acts.”

Featured image via Shutterstock 

 

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.