Marriage, the Chick-fil-A debates

What a delight to see the outrage erupt from both sides over the relatively benign comments of Chick-fil-A's CEO, Dan Cathy.  Cathy said in his now famous interview in the Washington Times article, "Chick-fil-A chief’s views on marriage alienate gays, Muppets":

“We are very much supportive of the family — 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. We give God thanks for that. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles,”

Nothing wrong or particularly inflammatory with that, simply a man expressing his views.  However, this simple statement caused such an uproar in the gay community that several prominent Democrat office holders stepped up the dialogue proclaiming disdain towards Cathy for daring to speak publicly what was on his mind and threatening that they would use their "power" of office to make it difficult for the company to conduct business in their cities.  "How dare Cathy speak his mind?!?" is their message to us all.  Indeed the Mayor of Boston and Chicago both came out with scathing words against not only Cathy but the entire Chick-fil-A enterprise, which as far as we know, has broken no anti-discrimination laws.

Smoking Bans - The Continued War on Smokers Takes a Strange Turn

Dr Michael Siegel continues to take on businesses that refuse to hire smokers.

Of course tobacco control advocates like Dr Siegel are opposed to such discrimination towards smokers by extremist anti-smokers, but I just have a feeling it's not entirely because it's simply unfair to smokers.  What else is there then?  Quite simply because it illustrates the concept of free association which undermines the reasoning legislated smoking bans were able to be forced on business owners in the first place - to protect the rights of the non-smoker.

Now I respect Dr Siegel even though our opinions differ on a number of issues.  He has always been willing to discuss issues, to include his own research with us laymen on the other side of the debate and listen to our concerns with some of their proposals and positions.  Even though he is currently at war with the mainstream anti-smoker extremists who have taken over the business, it's only because he now sees their irrationality as undermining what he considers to be legitimate progress that he has been a part of from the beginning.  He still is very much a tobacco control advocate supporting things like smoking bans which I view as an illegitimate abuse of authority.