Grand Mufti Emanuel's Chicago Values

When Rahm Emanuel ascended to the top of Chicago's political heap last year, it was thought to have been the result of a citywide election that won him the mayorship. I had no idea he was appointed the city's first Grand Mufti.

But thus it must be, as Emanuel has spoken definitively as to what shall henceforth be considered Chicago values.

This, of course, refers to the Chick-fil-A flap, in which Emanuel expressed support for a city alderman who was going to ban the restaurant from his ward over chain president Dan Cathy's opposition to faux marriage.

That alderman, Proco Moreno, actually said, "Because of this man's [Cathy's] ignorance, I will now be denying Chick-fil-A's permit to open a restaurant in the 1st Ward." This prompted Grand Mufti Emanuel to affirm that the restaurant was unwelcome and decree, "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago values."

Yet who is Emanuel to issue a fatwa on what Chicago values are on faux marriage when approximately half of Chicagoans oppose the idea? Should these residents be expelled from the city or prohibited from making a living?

But if Emanuel speaks for a supernatural source, and I wouldn't doubt it, it isn't God. This is because hypocrisy is not a divine value.

It isn't just that Emanuel worked for Bill Clinton and never made a peep when his boss signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law. That was a long time ago, some will say. It isn't even just that he was a staunch supporter of Barack Obama, who also opposed faux marriage until his "evolution" this year. Grand Mufti Emanuel could have experienced sympathetic evolution, some will say. It's that Emanuel has also been a supporter of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

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