Earlier this month, a group of roughly 180 Notre Dame students and faculty signed onto a letter opposing opening a Chick-fil-A in their dining hall for reasons ranging from the ethical (the chain's donations to anti-LGBTQ groups as well as CEO Dan Cathy's personal monetary contributions towards antagonizing LGBTQ people) to the practical (their limited menu doesn't offer a lot of options for non-meat eating students and they're not open on Sundays, a day when many students, if not all, generally have to eat). Given the many possible options for non-gay-hating fast food restaurants that offer a variety of options and are open on all of the days, letter writers Tilly Keeven-Glascock and Joey Jegier argued that the school could and should do better than Chick-fil-A.

Naturally, this has upset Campus Reform, a rightwing website targeting supposed "liberal bias" in education, and attracted attention from Fox News. But while both media outlets were critical of the students and faculty being allowed to express their opinions in this matter, only South Carolina senior Senator Lindsey Graham has said that he would be willing to go to war over it.

He tweeted:

I have always thought @NotreDame was one of the greatest universities in America, if not the world.

It's disappointing to hear some ND students and faculty want to ban Chick-fil-A from doing business on campus because they disagree with the values held by the Chick-fil-A founders. What a dangerous precedent to set.

I want everyone in South Carolina and across America to know I have Chick fil-A's back. I hope we don't have to, but I will go to war for the principles Chick fil-A stands for.

Great food.
Great service.
God bless Chick fil-A!

Of course, Lindsey Graham saying he's willing to go to war for Chick-fil-a is like a normal person saying they would eat pizza for world peace. He really, really loves war and is happy to go to war for whatever reason anyone can think of to go to war. Here he is literally licking his lips not over a chicken sandwich, but over the prospect of bombing Cuba.

No one loves war like Lindsey Graham loves war, so really, it would not be a major sacrifice for him to go to war in order to force a college to have an on-campus Chick-fil-A. It would be a great time for him. Although the problem is, if a shock and awe campaign were successful ... how would he force students to go there? Would he require that they spend a certain amount at the chain each week? Or that perhaps money should come out of their tuition to fund the venture? How should this work?

If Graham were as much of a tough guy as he tries to make himself out to be, what with all the war talk, he wouldn't be using euphemisms like "values" or being vague about why students don't want Chick-fil-A there. He would say right out that they oppose Chick-fil-A because the founder is a giant bigot who hates gay people. He knows that no one is opposed to "values" like not cheating, lying or murdering people, but he wants to make that seem like the case because "mean students don't want gay-hating chicken sandwiches on campus" is not a particularly compelling narrative.

The values held by Chick-fil-A founders that are at issue are not their devotion to God or desire to be good people or what have you — Notre Dame is a religious institution. The issue is their homophobia and transphobia and the fact that any money spent there is likely to go to campaigns meant to hurt LGBTQ people. And that does not feel good for a lot of students. Now sure, you could say that this is a tad hypocritical given that Notre Dame is a Catholic university and the Catholic Church is also pretty big on those things. However, that doesn't mean that the students and faculty there are required to be bigoted themselves or are not entitled to non-hateful food court options.

[Lindsey Graham Twitter]

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