When it comes to making money while being an asshole, just ask CEO of Chick-fil-A

TUE MAR 18, 2014 AT 09:52 AM PDT
Chick-fil-A CEO now regrets dragging the company into anti-equality morass

Everyone can change. That's the message we're supposed to take from Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy's new humility over publicly tying his company to anti-marriage-equality efforts two years ago. He really wishes he hadn't done that.
“Every leader goes through different phases of maturity, growth and development and it helps by (recognizing) the mistakes that you make,” Cathy said. “And you learn from those mistakes. If not, you’re just a fool. I’m thankful that I lived through it and I learned a lot from it.
So does that mean he's had a change of heart, and in his new maturity has grown to accept that marriage equality is not, in fact, the doom of America? No. He just regrets saying it out loud, because money.
“Probably the elements that were stressful for me most is from our internal staff and from operators and how this may be affecting them,” he said. “The bottom line is we have a responsibility here to keep the whole of the organization in mind and it has to take precedence over the personal expression and opinion on social issues.”
There ya go, lesson learned. From now on he'll be trying very hard to not link his own anti-equality views with the company brand, at least not in public.
Of more possible substance: The company itself also steeply reduced donations to anti-gay organizations after the flap, though it's not yet clear if that was a sea change or a temporary interruption.