Rollin' Over The Cracker Barrel

It was actually last year-May 2024- when the executives at Cracker Barrel began 
 to plan the change to the company logo, as well as reiterated their undying
"commitment" to diversity, equity, and inclusion, better known as "DEI".

 

Image courtesy/Southern Living

And, although the company denies working closely with the UN Human Rights Council,
the restaurant chain's former management and training leader, Steve Smotherman
who spearheaded an LGBTQ employee resource group at Cracker Barrel, went
on to sit on the highly controversial UN group's Business Advisory Council.

In recent years, conservative and religious rights advocacy groups have claimed
that evangelical (Bible-believing) Christians have been singled out and unfairly
targeted for discrimination by the UN-HRC regarding their stance on issues like 
LGBTQ + rights and abortion.  The UN-HRC meanwhile conveniently twists
 the narrative, claiming it frames their position as defending, "the rights
of vulnerable groups" against discrimination, "justified by religious beliefs"
 and not as an attack on Christianity itself.

According to a recent report from FOX News, former Cracker Barrel executive
  Smotherman, who joined the company in 2005, claims that he was initially 
reluctant to do so due to it's alleged "bad reputation" with the gay community.  

In 1991, the chain instituted a corporate-wide policy stating that any employee who
failed to demonstrate "normal heterosexual values" would be fired.  After 11 employees
were fired, purportedly due to their sexual orientation, protests and boycotts were
staged throughout the country.  Gay rights groups like the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force called for action against Cracker Barrel, which rescinded this policy by
March of that year, however, the former company-wide vote to ban discrimination
against gay employees would not take effect until 2002. Almost 25 years ago.

 Now the executives of Cracker Barrel found it necessary to remove genial mascot
Uncle Hershel from their company's logo as part of their "rebranding" program.
Why? Does Uncle Herschel somehow represent the anti-gay policy of the past? 
 Is it perhaps due to the fact that he is an "old timer" white man and a Christian from
   the Southern Bible Belt, even perhaps the progenitor of a traditional American family?
  He could even have been a father, a  grandfather or great-grandfather.  
In truth, the "old timer" was based on the founder's real life uncle.

The founder of the family friendly country store and restaurant chain was a
 man named Danny Evins, an evangelical Christian with strong conservative 
 values. A man who would not allow alcohol to be served in his restaurants and 
 who preferred Christian music to be played during business hours.

Oh, and by the way, the restaurant was given the name "Cracker Barrel" not
 because Uncle Herschel was conceived as a "cracker" which is a derogatory
slang term for a poor white southerner, but was named after the little
country grocery stores of America's past, where people, usually men, would
 come to talk, exchange news, and occasionally play a game or two of checkers
 on top of an empty barrel which was used to transport soda crackers to the store.

 

An old Indian warns white settlers gathered in a store in De Smet,
 a frontier town on the South Dakota prairie of the impending 
 hard winter in the book, "The Long Winter"
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
(1940)
Illustration by Garth Willams
(1953)

The enormous public outcry over this most recent attack to erase all traces,
 not only of traditional Americana, but the influence of God's Word within our
  increasingly secular culture, in many ways mirrors the Chick-fil-A controversy in 
 2012, when that company's CEO Dan Cathy, an evangelical Christian, and political
 conservative, said that he believed in traditional marriage between one man
and one woman.  Same-sex marriage was not federally recognized at the time.

Although Mr. Cathy had every right to express his deeply held, biblically-based
belief, certain members of the duplicitous, corporate-backed news media went
ballistic, and initiated a vicious public campaign against the restaurant chain,  
 encouraging protests and boycotts.  

And yet, people of all races, religions, and sexual orientations have always been
 welcomed there and still come to dine at the local Chick-fil-A restaurants near me.
 The parking lot is usually packed with cars and the drive thru lines are so long 
 that employees are often sent out on foot to take orders from hungry customers.

 At last report, I have yet to see any employee out in the parking lot,
or by the front entrance of the restaurant holding up a sign, saying:
"Please Check Your Sexuality At The Door".