POS - My thoughts on the Chick-Fil-A situation

So Chick-Fil-A has been in the news a bit lately, thanks to the appreciation day on Wednesday and the same-sex kiss-in on Friday.  There has been some extremely heated debate over the whole situation, and I wanted to weigh in with my own thoughts on it.  This is what I think about the whole situation:

1.  Chick-Fil-A's president Dan Cathy has the right to say whatever he wants to say.  His right to say or do whatever he wants is protected by the Constitution, as long as it is not illegal.
2.  Chick-Fil-A has built its reputation on being a company with very strong Christian values, to the point that they are closed on Sundays.  If anyone is really surprised that the head of the company would be opposed to gay marriage, I'm surprised that they don't have the brain cells to figure that one out on their own.
3.  Just as Dan Cathy has the 1st Amendment right to say whatever he wants doesn't mean that people have to like it.  The people protesting have every much as right under the 1st Amendment to protest the company as the people supporting it.
4.  Chick-Fil-A as a company has the right to spend its money lobbying for whatever it desires, even if they are funding groups that are deemed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups, so long as it is doing nothing illegal. It's not like CFA is the first company to lobby government for changes.
5.  Customers that don't want to see the money they pay the company for their services have the right to take their business elsewhere.  No one is forcing them to buy the food there, no matter how tasty it may be (I wouldn't know, I've never had their food).  This applies to any company you have a political disagreement with.  I for one try to shop as little as possible at Wal-Mart because of some of their policies.
6.  People that are still shopping at CFA are effectively telling their gay friends (if they have any) that they think tasty fried chicken sandwiches are more important to them than their friendship with that person.  This gentleman's excellent essay on the matter should be read by all:  The Chick Fellatio: Stuck in the craw
7.  Don't treat the employees at CFA like they are the problem.  They just work there.  In this economy, they probably couldn't leave even if they wanted to.  In fact, you may be attacking someone who doesn't agree with your point of view at all, they may even be closeted gay employees. Chick-Fil-A's gay employees speak out 
8.  If you treat the low level employees like dirt, then you are just a douche.  Man fired for bullying Chick-Fil-A employee

Ok those are my thoughts on the matter.  Those of you that know me know where I stand on the debate over same-sex marriage and civil rights (and in the future I'll do a post on that elaborating more) but feel free to continue the discussion in the comments.  For this post I'll be heavily monitoring the comments and I will not hesitate to delete posts if you devolve into hateful name calling.  If there is to be discussion of anything on my blog, it must be civil.