Chick-fil-A CEO's equality award sparks backlash

News that Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy won an equality award isn't sitting well with many gay rights supporters.

Cathy was awarded the Community Empowerment Award last Saturday from the Urban League of Greater Atlanta, a nonprofit civil rights organization. The organization has defended its position, saying the company has contributed to Atlanta food efforts, as well as assistance for poor, homeless and otherwise disadvantaged communities in the area, according to CNNMoney.

The award, however, immediately sparked a backlack from the LGBT community.

Last year, Cathy said in a newspaper interview that he is "supportive of the ... biblical definition of the family unit," prompting gay rights protests and boycotts at Chick-fil-A locations across the country. Then, in June when the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, Cathy tweeted that it was "a sad day for our nation." (He promptly deleted the tweet.)

Apart from the CEO's personal views, his company also has ranked poorly corporate equality based on analysis from the Human Rights Campaign, which reviews employment policies and benefits at thousands of U.S. companies. Chick-fil-A earned a 0 this year on a scale of 0 to 100, according to the report.

Chick-fil-A officials declined to comment for the story.

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