This Wednesday, at the urging of former U.S. presidential wannabe/Fox News gabber Mike Huckabee, people who don’t like homosexuals will gorge themselves on chicken at a previously mostly unheard of fast food chain. They will photograph and Tweet themselves – as former wannabe vice president Sarah Palin did this past weekend – gleefully celebrating their intolerance.

No doubt Palin was taking a break from looking after her illegitimate grandson while his teenage mother continues her relentless pursuit of a career in reality television. That’s the American right wing’s version of family values.

It’s worth noting that Cathy isn’t spending his money offering counselling to straight couples in trouble. He isn’t fighting spousal abuse or underwriting campaigns to reduce the incidence of single motherhood. His millions are pledged to a deliberate effort to deny basic legal rights to dedicated and loving couples and their children. That makes him a promoter of intolerance and an enabler of hatred.

Those who make a pilgrimage to Chick fil-A outlets in the U.S. on Wednesday share common ground with the men and women who heckled the Little Rock Nine or those who poured sugar over the heads of whites and blacks who dared sit together at a Woolworths counter. Twenty years from now will they flush with the shame that most surviving segregationists now feel when they reflect on their actions and thoughts in the 1950s and 60s?