During the Grammy awards last Sunday, the notoriously anti-LGBT restaurant chain Chick-fil-A debuted a new commercial featuring the voice and hit song, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” of Grace Slick, a member of legendary rock bands Jefferson Airplane and Starship.
Chick-fil-A has a well-documented history of funding anti-LGBT organizations through their philanthropic foundation WinShape. In interviews, CEO Dan T. Cathy has critiqued LGBT rights supporters who “have the audacity to define marriage” and said they are bringing “God’s judgment” upon the nation.
So why would Slick, a staunch supporter of LGBT rights, agree to license her music to Chick-fil-A. As she explains in an op-ed she wrote in Forbes magazine, “From the moment I agreed to license the song, I knew I wanted to set an example for other artists. I wanted to tell them, “Your art will survive and thrive. Do not let it be used by companies who support intolerance. Don’t be afraid to take a stand. You’re an artist; that’s what we do.”
To strike back at the restaurant’s anti-LGBT agenda, Slick is donating every dime she made from that ad to Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest and largest LGBT legal organization, which was behind the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage.
“But instead of them replacing my song with someone else’s and losing this opportunity to strike back at anti-LGBTQ forces, I decided to spend the cash in direct opposition to “Check”-fil-A’s causes – and to make a public example of them, too. We’re going to take some of their money, and pay it back,” Slick explains.
