GSA and the Coffee Shop Scenario

           A few weeks ago, on the Monday before the Homecoming dance, my high school sponsored an event that led to a lot of controversy. The event, called Paint the Town, involved various clubs affiliated with the high school painting the unique murals on the windows of local businesses based on the homecoming theme (America) in a sort of art contest. On the Thursday before the dance, all the windows were judged by a committee, and winners were chosen for various categories. The controversy arose because one of one club’s window  was erased before it even got the chance to be judged.

The club was the Gay Straight Alliance, who had created a rainbow flag to symbolize their club’s mission as well as go with the patriotic theme. GSA had been assigned a window at a certain nationally franchised coffee shop, which decided to wash away the GSA’s rainbow flag mural after receiving a complaint from a customer. This caused a huge up rise in our town, with a majority of residents speaking up in defense of the GSA and shaming the coffee shop for its actions.

There are a lot of ways to discuss this event, but obviously, my favorite is the ethical approach.

From the GSA’s perspective, this action was entirely unethical. Their club was making a harmless, non-invasive statement promoting peace and equality as part of a school-sponsored event that this coffee shop had agreed to participate in. From their perspective, the shop had no right to erase their window after already agreeing to participate, and by doing so, insulted and alienated a large demographic of equality-advocating people. If GSA had known that the store may take this action, they may well have requested to paint their mural at some other business.

However, in every interesting ethical scenario, there are multiple sides, and it is important to examine the options the coffee shop had in this situation.

On one hand, the shop had the option of erasing the GSA’s window. Ethically, this would mean taking unfair action (backing out of their agreement to participate in PTT and therefore disqualifying the GSA from the contest) against the GSA and potentially alienating the larger LGBT community. However, the other option of not erasing the window, had consequences as well. Only one customer spoke out against the window, but there are potentially many more customers who were made uncomfortable by the window who simply never spoke up. Even though the rainbow mural was a peaceful statement, it was still carrying the strong implications of a very politically charged issue, and it is very possible that it managed to offend some people. For all this shop knew, these same people could have caused a controversy of their own by speaking out against the shop for keeping up the window. Do the opinions of the people who were made uncomfortable matter less than those of the GSA? This was the ethical dilemma the coffee shop struggled with, and in the end it chose former option.

The coffee shop itself has no homophobic leanings, and in fact they have two openly gay employees working there. In response to the controversy they caused by erasing the window, they have had several corporate representatives come to town to explain that this action was not in accordance with national policy that the shop itself did not mean to offend the LGBT community. In the end, this event is a great example of how there is not always a consequence free action in ethical scenarios, and that choices can always be messy, but then again, that’s what makes ethics such an interesting topic in the first place.

Sources:
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Northbrook-Caribou-washes-off-GSA-display-/44554.html
http://northbrook.suntimes.com/news/cariboufolo-NBS-10102013:article