In spite of Coors’ efforts, many queer people have continued to stay away from the Rocky Mountain brew. So How Is This Whole Speakership Mess Going to Play Out? Trump Says He’s Going to Testify in His New York Civil Trial. The Supreme Court’s Right Flank Is Laying Groundwork to Dismantle Defendant RightsĪ Bold Challenge to Chinese Aggression Succeeded. It ultimately took the company two years to secure the land for its new brewery, all while delicately balancing overtures to both conservatives and gay consumers. The threat of a “Queer Beer,” as one fearmongering headline put it at the time, placed Coors’ plans for expansion in danger. In 1979, when the company sought to open a second brewery on the East Coast, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, locals worried that their home would become “a haven for homosexuals” because of Coors’ advertising campaigns. Conservatives also protested, insisting that Coors had gone too far. Many gay activists refused to see these efforts as anything more than disingenuous payoffs and have vigorously protested Coors’ sponsorships over the years. In fact, Molson Coors is now an industry leader in its support for LGBTQ consumers and causes. ![]() The brewery also generously supported AIDS walks and research organizations, and to this day it sponsors Denver’s annual Pride Parade. In 1979 Coors added sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination clause and began paying for ads in gay publications. In fact, part of the reason Bud Light (and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev) embraces-and is embraced by-queer beer drinkers is thanks to a historic boycott of one of its rivals, Coors Brewing Company.Īnd so the company began to appeal specifically to them through ads and public, well-funded gestures of goodwill, thus convincing some to drop their boycott. ![]() But this particular fracas over Bud Light grows from a deeper history of consumer politics, and it has an amusing resonance given the crucial role beer-or not drinking beer-has played in the past successes of the LGBTQ movement. In one sense, it was a typical script of public outrage that is reenacted whenever a corporation takes any supposedly political stance these days. Why? The brand has suddenly gone “woke,” they say, and doesn’t understand its real consumers. ![]() Not a few right-wing social media personalities, celebrities, and politicians responded with outrage: One man recorded himself emptying beers into a sink, and Kid Rock, the Michigan singer, shot up Bud Light cases with a rifle. Bud Light came under fire this week-both literally and figuratively-after the brand announced a partnership with a trans influencer named Dylan Mulvaney.
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