Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself,

associate editor Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay. You can support our podcast by

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Welcome to the Qualette podcast.

I'm Jonathan Kay.

This isn't usually known to be a food-oriented podcast,

but this month in Canada,

the issue of fast food, fried chicken to be exact, became big news.

When the Chick-fil-A chain opened its first restaurant in downtown Toronto, amid scenes of protest.

The reason for that protest is that Chick-fil-A is run by Dan Kathy, the son of Chick-fil-A founder Truitt

Kathy, both religious Christians. In recent years, the family and the company's operators have donated to a variety of socially

conservative causes that oppose same-sex marriage and equal rights for LGBT people more generally, including notably the Salvation Army and the

Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

My initial plan for this podcast had been to head down to Toronto's inaugural Chick-Fellay restaurant, penetrate the protests,

and go inside to ask Chick-Fellay diners and workers what they thought about gay rights.

Unfortunately, the large protests had attracted mobs of customers, and the restaurant was completely

lined out. So, instead of waiting, I went down the block and ate my chicken at a Korean restaurant

called Hotstar. The chicken there was excellent, but the visit provided me very

little useful journalistic information. Fortunately, in the days that followed, I was able to

...