If Chick-fil-A opened a restaurant in Boston, I wouldn’t care. Hell, if I were feeling masochistic and was in the area, I might even pick up a chicken sandwich.

“Quick, alert the Internet! Bill hates gay people! Put a picture of his face on the door at Machine! Ship him off to the Bible Belt!”

Hear me out.

Like any citizen on this side of the culture war, I support gay marriage. I support any sort of marriage. There was a 13-year-old girl in my 8th grade class who married and had a baby with a man from her homeland in Brazil. They belonged to an obscure diasporic religious sect. I ain’t hatin’. All people are people and deserve equal rights.

But listen, all this media frenzy about Chick-fil-A does no one any good except Chick-fil-A and the powers that be — and it’s putting a considerable tax on my sanity.

Ever heard the old saying, “there’s no such thing as bad press”? Well, it’s true. Look at Donald Trump’s run for president. Look at Paris Hilton. Getting your name in media spheres is always a win, no matter what. Seriously, Paris Hilton is a household name and a multimillion-dollar brand. All she did was sham on camera with an upward inflection, and release – oh sorry, leak – an objectively lame sex tape.

So, Internet Knights of Liberal Ideals, every time you tweet, blog, Facebook, upvote, Digg, etc. anything about Chick-fil-A, you lend a helping hand to the company you so ardently shame.

For every person who reads up on the whole Chick-fil-A thing and decides to never support the establishment again, there are at least two who catch wind of the buzz and think, “Oh, Chick-fil-A, haven’t had that in a while.” Free advertisement. That’s all this accomplishes. Instead of posting about it on the Internet, why not just mail them a check for a dollar and cut out the in-between.

But of course, controversies like this allow for politicians to cash in big on public support by doing essentially nothing. A letter Mayor Menino sent to Chick-fil-A informing them that they are not welcome in Boston circulated around news publications and the Internet. It was an extremely well written letter – a copy-writing chart topper – and it makes him look awesome. All he had to do was put his name on it.

I’d rather make my politicians work for their public support. They get enough free meals as it is.

This is the problem with militant liberalism – a term I recently chuckled at on the web – it’s kind of a trap, and it’s easily manipulated.

One who boycotts Chick-fil-A for its anti-LGBT stance must also boycott Nike for their sweatshop conditions, BP Oil for their damage to the environment, American Apparel for their underpaid workers, Invisible Children for their bastardization of foreign aid, Chartwells for the poor treatment of their workers, The New York Times for their sketchy bias toward Israel, literally any major meat processing company for their poor treatment of animals and the list goes on.

I’m only listing recent media splashes, and obviously dated ones at that. I checked out of the whole “who’s evil enough to not give money to” game a while ago. Point being, only some make splashes, and the splashes are intermittent (I urge readers to think about why they’re intermittent, and who may be controlling the stream of information).

If we were to invest serious time into looking at businesses and the ways they have offended basic human rights, we might find that we couldn’t buy or support anything without letting go of our sense of self-righteousness.

So yeah, I would eat at Chick-fil-A, and I don’t think it’s any more socially irresponsible or hypocritical than boycotting it. But one thing I do know: it’s way less obnoxious.

-Bill Shaner can be reached at [email protected]