Grace Slick Donates Money From Chick-fil-A Starship Ad to LGBTQ Group
Jefferson Airplane and Starship singer Grace Slick revealed in an op-ed that all the money she received from Chick-fil-A using “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” in a Grammy night commercial will go toward an LGBQT civil rights organization.
In the Forbes op-ed, Slick admitted that she was initially against allowing the fast food chain to utilize Starship’s 1987 hit given the company’s stance on same-sex marriages.
“Chick-fil-A pisses me off. The Georgia-based company has a well-documented history of funding organizations … that are against gay marriage,” the singer wrote. “I firmly believe that men should be able to marry men, and women women. I am passionately against anyone who would try to suppress this basic human right. So my first thought when ‘Check’-fil-A came to me was, ‘Fuck no!’ But then I decided, ‘Fuck yes.'”
Slick changed her mind on the ad, reveling in the idea of donating her paycheck to Lambda Legal, a pro-LGBTQ civil rights legal organization. It’s unclear how much Slick was paid for the ad.
“Instead of [Chick-fil-A] replacing my song with someone else’s and losing this opportunity to strike back at anti-LGBTQ forces, I decided to spend the cash in direct opposition to ‘Check’-fil-A’s causes – and to make a public example of them, too,” Slick wrote. “We’re going to take some of their money, and pay it back.”
Slick added that she hoped artists were also mindful about which companies they licensed their music to. “See, I come from a time when artists didn’t just sell their soul to the highest bidder, when musicians took a stand, when the message of songs was ‘feed your head,’ not ‘feed your wallet,'” she added. “We need that kind of artistic integrity today, more than ever.”
“It’s not only great fun but also a great honor to be part of Grace Slick’s plan to undermine Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBT spending by re-routing their money to us,” Lisa Hardaway, Deputy Director of Education and Public Affairs at Lambda Legal, tells Rolling Stone. “And just as important as the dollars is the way in which Grace made a public example out of the company’s homophobic actions. Nothing’s gonna stop us now!”
A rep for Chick-fil-A did not immediately reply to a request for comment.