This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 31st, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown, is the speech of a corporate CEO grounds for punishing the company

with delayed or denied permits they otherwise

would have gotten. Cato Institute Senior Fellow Tom Palmer says no. He

argues that the politicians threatening chick-falaay should retract what they've said and

apologize for threatening the company.

Mr. Dan Kathy, who's a CEO of chick-filay, which is a chicken fast food restaurant, very popular around the country, had uttered a statement

that he did not support gay marriage, that he supported what he considered to be

a biblical definition of marriage.

So he expressed his opinion on a very controversial issue.

The consequence was not merely that he was criticized, that's what happens in a free society,

but he was actually threatened with the loss of the rights of his company and his shareholders by mayors and alderman and two major cities who said you will not be allowed to open restaurants here as a punishment

for having uttered an opinion that we find reprehensible.

Now that seems to be a pretty clear issue of the First Amendment, but just from the perspective of how

businesses are allowed to function, it's extremely arbitrary.

Oh, absolutely.

And the notion that somehow they're not restricting his speech, they're just

restricting his business, that's like saying, we're not restricting your speech we're just finding you a million

dollars every time you say something we don't like that's not a restriction on

speech you can you can keep speaking until you don't have any money left in your

bank account.

Well, that's obviously illegal.

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