When we published news about Chick-fil-A’s coming food truck yesterday, it seemed innocuous enough—though the place serves pretty regular fare, it has something of a cult following. Hell, we weren’t even the first place to get the story. (NBC4 wins that one.)

So I was surprised when Dean Gold, owner of Cleveland Park’s well-regarded Dino, quickly took to Twitter and Facebook to chastise us for saying chicken lovers should “rejoice” at the news of the new addition to the city’s vibrant food truck scene. “Fck em,” he tweeted, referring to both Chick-fil-A and DCist. His grief? That Chick-fil-A’s charitable arm, the WinShape Foundation, has given millions of dollars to groups that aren’t friendly to gay causes.

We continued the discussion thereafter on Twitter, and he even took to the City Paper to argue the point further: “Chik-Fil-A [sic] is not just owned by a person who hates gays, but they are using their tax exempt foundation and their corporate advantages to further their hate.” Gold also criticized how they produce their food—”corporate crap from tortured chickens,” he wrote on Facebook—and took us to task for advertising Chick-fil-A’s arrival in town, basically calling us PR flacks for the company. (Someone else wondered if we had been paid to write the post, and I can assure you that no check or box of chicken sandwiches is coming my way.)

To Gold, there’s nothing separating Chick-fil-A’s chicken from its conservative politics—notably it’s support for anti-gay causes through the WinShape Foundation. (All the details are here.) You support one, you support the other. So by publishing news that Chick-fil-A was coming to town and saying that people should “rejoice,” we were basically saying that everyone should “rejoice” because bigots were marching into town for a big party. Not just any bigots, mind you—but bigots who make industrial fast food.

The whole incident got me to thinking, of course. After all, I’d never been lumped in with gay haters, and never had any food post provoked such heated discussion—especially about something other than the quality of the food.

We rarely run a litmus test on restaurants and restaurateurs, because whether a cook or a meal is good or not doesn’t change with their political affiliations. Would a staunchly Republican Michel Richard be any less Michel Richard? Speaking of, who has Gold voted for in the past? Given money to? How about his employees? Does any of that make Dino less the destination? What about Busboys and Poets’ Andy Shallal, who regularly supports left-leaning causes? Should Republicans boycott his incredibly popular restaurants because of it? How about The Black Squirrel? Did owner Tom Knott’s musings on illegal immigration last year change your opinions on the quality of the beer or food he serves?

Obviously, Chick-fil-A is on another level. It’s a corporate chain with many more locations, it makes more money and it has more influence than some of our local restaurateurs. Additionally, it picked one issue that doesn’t go very far in D.C.—the city has long celebrated its gay community, and our writing has faithfully reflected that.

For Gold and for many others, food is politics. You choose the world you want to live in by the type of food you buy, the businesses you frequent and the lifestyle you live. If you really love McDonalds, then you have to accept that you’re giving money to a massive industrial food processing machine that has by all accounts made many people fatter. If you really love Chick-fil-A, you’re not just supporting that same industrial machine, but also it’s charitable contributions to groups that want to chip away at the rights of gay Americans across the country.

I still believe that someone can love the food but hate the politics. That’s a personal decision. I decided to post about the Chick-fil-A food truck because it seemed newsworthy enough from a food perspective—lots of people weirdly love its food, and I’ve heard countless people over the years complain that Chick-fil-A has never entered the D.C. market. (Well, spare an existing outlet at Catholic University.)

Gold has every right to hate Chick-fil-A’s politics. As a 10-year D.C. resident and staunch supporter of gay rights and equality, they certainly rub me the wrong way. But that doesn’t mean that Chick-fil-A’s food truck isn’t news—for its food. (Good news or bad? We report, you decide.) Gold may have had a point that more information on the restaurant’s charitable contributions could make people think twice about whether to eat there. That’s why I didn’t shy away from including one of his tweets on the issue in the original post and dedicating the time to exploring the issue further today. So here you have it—Chick-fil-A gives money to conservative groups that have long fought gay rights.

Gold could have been much more successful in making this point, though, had he not gone on something of an Internet-wide verbal rampage yesterday. The beauty of the medium we work in is that it’s an evolving conversation, and Gold could easily have added his voice to it had he not tried to paint anyone who’s ever eaten at Chick-fil-A as a closeted gay-basher. I think this is especially true with us—we’ve never shied away from our support for gay rights, much less celebrating local restaurants and entrepreneurs.

I am curious—what do you think? Did you know that Chick-fil-A supported anti-gay groups? Does that change your opinion of their food and whether you’ll eat there in the future? How much should politics play a role in moving you to eat one place over another?