RETURNING today to political news after a couple weeks spent moving house from Iowa City to Houston, I find that nothing both interesting and important has transpired in the interim. The presidential race is a bit of a nail-biter, for those of us who bite our nails in boredom. Even the Olympic medal-count contest between America and China is dull. Say what you will about the looming risk of total nuclear annihilation, it kept the Olympics interesting. Maybe it would help if China's numerous medal winners were cast more in the mould of Ivan Drago or the hulking East German lady swimmers of yore, because tiny synchronised divers just don't inspire the same enlivening sense of terrifying rivalry.

Olympics aside, I've kept abreast (so to speak) only of the Chick-fil-A controversy, thanks to the exceedingly thorough coverage afforded this most pressing issue by Houston's intrepid network-television news teams. Though several local "kiss-ins" were granted cursory coverage, for balance, the sight of lines of conservative Houstonians snaking around area Chick-fil-A franchises had our local news squads almost frothing with excitement. One elderly woman was captured on camera declaring Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A's president, "my hero" for making a stand against same-sex marriage. Waiting in wilting heat to uphold family values and honour a hero by eating a chicken sandwich was really the least she could do. 

It's my view that this sort of skirmish in the culture wars is an inevitable consequence of trends in "ethical consumption" and "corporate social responsibility". Conservatives sceptical of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement have often charged that CSR is a stalking horse for liberal causes that have failed to get traction through ordinary political channels. This charge finds some support, I think, in the fact that few in the media seem to see Chick-fil-A's Christian-influenced culture and business practices as an example of CSR, though obviously it is. Doesn't the demand that corporations act responsibly in the interests of society, in ways other than profit-seeking, directly imply that corporate leaders who find same-sex marriage socially irresponsible should do something or other to discourage it? Ian Reifowitz, writing in the Huffington Post, finds it "troubling" that Chick-fil-A prefers Christians as franchise owners, but rightly sees that the source of his unease when generalised may complicate CSR-like corporate policies:

Whether it's legal or illegal, I still find these company policies troubling, although it is a complex issue. Let's say there was a restaurant chain that decided to put out a statement saying: "In addition to our commitment to non-discrimination and equal treatment, we prefer franchise operators who share our commitment to progressive values." Would you be comfortable with that? Would it feel right morally to you?

That checks out morally for me. People can run their businesses according to whatever principles they prefer. It's just stupid business for owners and managers who want to sell their firm's goods and services to people who don't happen to share their morals or politics, especially in cultures in which consumers are increasingly expected to vote with their wallets.

Matters of moral truth aside, what's the difference between buying a little social justice with your coffee and buying a little Christian traditionalism with your chicken? There is no difference. Which speaks to my proposition that CSR, when married to norms of ethical consumption, will inevitably incite bouts of culture-war strife. CSR with honest moral content, as opposed to anodyne public-relations campaigns about "values", is a recipe for the politicisation of production and sales. But if we also promote politicised consumption, we're asking consumers to punish companies whose ideas about social responsibility clash with our own. Or, to put it another way, CSR that takes moral disagreement and diversity seriously—that really isn't a way of using corporations as instruments for the enactment of progressive social change that voters can't be convinced to support—asks companies with controversial ideas about social responsibility to screw over their owners and creditors and employees for...what? 

I'd suggest the best arena for moral disagreement is not the marketplace, but our intellectual and democratic institutions. We hash out our disagreements, as best we can, in public deliberation. The outcome of this deliberation becomes input to official policymaking, which in turn determines the rules of the game for business. Businesses then seek profits within the scope of those rules (and the consensus rules of common decency), and consumers buy the products that best satisfy their preferences. If businesses want to impose on themselves other constraints, fine. But let's not ask them to do so. And if consumer preferences happen to range over the production chains and management philosophies behind the goods and services they buy, fine. But let's not ask them to have such pernsickety and political preferences. Of course, this lovely, welfare-maximising arrangement will from time to time break down. For example, when we lose faith in the capacity of our public institutions to reliably translate the results of honest democratic negotiation into policy. Or when old consensus rules of common decency lose general assent.

For my part, I'm in the market for chicken sandwiches, not a fraudulent sense of moral superiority. I'll register my opinion on marriage equality come November.

(Photo credit: AFP)