People really like fried chicken, huh?

Last week, the Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Laura Wankel announced renovations to the Curry Student Center consisting of expanded seating and potential new restaurants, including a Chick-fil-A, which would be the southern fried chicken chain’s first venture into the Boston region.

I have to admit, I’ve never had Chick-fil-A. I’ve never spent much time down South, and even if I did, I wouldn’t go. They exclusively use peanut oil when cooking, and while they claim their oil is safe for those with allergies like me, it’s not the end of the world if I play it safe.

I also wouldn’t go because they have this funny little habit of really, really disliking gay people.

Chick-fil-A was founded on and is operated under “Biblical principles.” As a result, the chain’s management does things that are unusual but endearing, like their longstanding policy of closing on Sundays to allow for religious worship, and things that are unusual and concerning, like firing a Muslim employee in 2000 for refusing to participate in a group prayer to Jesus. (The suit was eventually settled out of court.)

It also, apparently, causes them to do things like donate millions upon millions of dollars to anti-gay organizations through their charitable arm. WinShape, run by Chick-fil-A’s founder S. Truett Cathy and his son, Donald “Bubba” Cathy, is an organization that aims to, as they put it, “shape winners.”

In WinShape’s most recent filing with the IRS covering the year 2010, which the organization is required to make public as a non-profit charitable organization, the vast majority of its funding was received from Chick-fil-A (slightly over $8 million) and CFA Properties ($11.5 million). CFA Properties, incorporated in Delaware, is a company which holds real estate and intellectual property for the chicken chain.

What did they spend this nearly $20 million on? Of the $3.8 million worth of contributions disclosed, slightly under $1.2 million went to the Marriage and Family Foundation, an organization founded by WinShape VP Bubba Cathy that advocates against same-sex marriage; $480,000 went to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which claims it has helped cure homosexuality and requires its members to sign a “sexual purity statement” that asserts that no “homosexual act constitute[s] an alternate lifestyle acceptable to God.” Another $247,500 went to the National Christian Foundation, which has provided “hundreds of grants to marriage and family organizations,” many of which explicitly advocate against same-sex marriage and gay rights.

WinShape also gave some money to Exodus International, an “ex-gay” organization which attempts to convert gay individuals to heterosexuality despite no accredited psychiatric organization believing that such a thing should even be attempted due to the psychological trauma inflicted in the process, and the Family Research Council, which is recognized as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Of the $3.8 million in declared contributions to other organizations, the Chick-fil-A-run WinShape gave $1.9 million to groups that are explicitly anti-gay. It’s difficult to reconcile that with their assertion that they are “not anti-anything.”

Wankel doesn’t seem to be too concerned about Chick-fil-A’s anti-gay funding, noting the chain is not guilty of illegal or discriminatory activity. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that at Wankel’s prior job as vice president for student affairs at Seton Hall University, a Catholic institution, she was required to defend the university’s decision to deny recognition to a gay-straight alliance, issuing a statement saying, in part, “No organization based solely upon sexual orientation may receive formal university recognition.” (A court later ruled Seton Hall could do so under a religious exemption.) Seton Hall was also sued during her tenure for moving a gay student from his on-campus housing after his roommate complained about his sexuality.

Wankel said last week, “organizations really do have the prerogative to support whoever they want.” They absolutely do. And that’s why Northeastern should support someone else.

– Michael Denham can be reached at [email protected].