Recently, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy had some unkind things to say about gay families, and a lot of people (present company included) didn’t care for his comments one bit. That shouldn’t surprise you: I’m a gay man, I’m married, I’m from the South — raised in a Southern Baptist family — and I’m a chef. So an Atlanta-based fast-food baron talking about how he understands the Bible enough to say that my life and marriage aren’t legitimate doesn’t sit well with me. A lot troubles me about this debate, but beyond the cherry-picking of Scripture to reinforce bigotry or the message that hateful rhetoric sends to young LGBT kids, there’s an element of this discussion that cuts away at a something I’ve held dear my whole life: the ability of food to bring people together. It’s a sad state when “comfort food” tears communities apart, making so many people feel attacked and unwanted. (MORE: Josh Ozersky’s Chick-fil-A Mea Culpa: I Have Changed My Mind) Here’s perhaps what makes me the most uncomfortable: Mr. Cathy owns more than 1,500 restaurants and serves up far more fried chicken than I do in my four. But I’ll say this: no matter how big the kitchen or seasoned the chef, hate has no place on America’s plates. Food is meant to be made with love, and that’s something I have understood since before I could reach the stove. My earliest memory of this quintessential Southern comfort food is of being a young child, watching my African-American nanny, Leila Curry, making her buttermilk fried chicken for us. She taught me not only how to make her chicken, but she also taught me — long before I ever knew I would need to — how to stand up to prejudice. It was the 1960s and racism was rampant in the South. When I saw race riots on the TV and asked her what was going on, she would tell me, “Honey, people just need to love each other.” During those days in the kitchen with her,![]()
