Gay bars in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., are boycotting Yuengling after the beer company’s owner, Richard “Dick” Yuengling Jr., came out in support of Donald Trump. Last week the fifth-generation businessman gave the Republican nominee’s son Eric a tour of a Yuengling brewery located in Pottsville, Pa.
“My father’s going to make it a lot easier for business to function,” the younger Trump claimed during a news conference. “We’re going to do it right here in the U.S.”
“Our guys are behind your father,” Yuengling responded. “We need him in there.”
Following the owner’s endorsement, Rep. Brian Sims, Pennsylvania’s first openly gay state legislator, called on gay-owned businesses in the Keystone State to stop serving the company’s products. Forbes described Yuengling as boasting a “cult-like status” in the 19 states — primarily in the East Coast and Southwest — where the beer is distributed. Even President Obama is a fan.
But the buck has to stop somewhere, as Sims wrote on Facebook.
“One of the most prevalent brands in the gayborhood and in LGBT bars across the Commonwealth, is using our own dollars to back a person and an ideology that says that our lives … matter less,” he said. “More to the point, those dollars are being used right now to give power to his bigoted messages attacking our black and brown neighbors and all of the women in our lives.”
“Our communities know a thing or two about voting with our dollars,” Sims added, “and I won’t be using my hard-earned dollars to give power to any company or person who hates me. What about you?”
Following Sims’s call to arms, several gay bars swiftly dropped the brand.
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Many of Yuengling’s most loyal drinkers have joined the call to #DumpYuengling. Todd Bird, who lives in Louisville, Ky., regularly drives 90 miles to Ohio for a drink of his favorite beer, but he said those days are over.
“Supporting racist, misogynist nut-job Trump is the end of the line for me,” he wrote on Twitter.
The money power of the queer community is not something to be scorned, as many companies have found before, and have had to make a decision to not be such bigoted asswipes, when they’ve seen what has happened to their bottom line. Yuengling has quite the following, and to have people dump it cold is going to hurt, even if Dick Yuengling hasn’t quite figured that one out yet. He will, eventually.
Full story at The Advocate.
