A national boycott is underway to boycott Guinness, Heineken and Sam Adams beers after the companies withdrew support from St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York and Boston simply because organizers wouldn’t let homosexuals carry pro-gay banners in their parades.
Fox News is reporting that gay politics tried to disrupt this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parades, most noticeably in Boston and New York, by insisting that gays were being discriminated against because parade organizers would not let them carry pro-gay banners. Even though no one in the parade is permitted to carry banners because the parade is about celebrating St. Patrick, beer manufacturers such as Guinness, Sam Adams and Heineken opted to pull their sponsorship from the parade.
Politicians also jumped into the fray with beleaguered New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio becoming the first mayor in decades to sit out the march because of the alleged discrimination. Boston Mayor Martin Walsh also skipped this year’s parade for the same reason.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has responded by calling for a national boycott of Guinness, Heineken, and Sam Adams:
“None of these companies believe in diversity,” Donohue said. “No gay person has ever been barred from marching in any St. Patrick’s Day parade, anymore than the parade bans pro-life Catholics or vegetarian Catholics; they simply cannot march under their own banner. The parade has one cause: honoring St. Patrick. Those who disagree do not have to march–that’s what diversity is all about.”
He continues: “The parade is quintessentially Catholic, beginning with a Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It is this Catholic element that angers those who are engaged in a bullying campaign against the St. Patrick’s Day parades.”
Donohue goes on to cite a unanimous 1995 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which it ruled that the First Amendment guarantees the right of private parade organizers to determine their own rules for marching.
“It is this liberty that the makers of Guinness, Heineken, and Sam Adams want to squash,” Donohue said.
“I have had my last Guinness and Sam Adams. Heineken was always slop, so there is no sacrifice there. I urge Catholics, and all those who believe in tolerance, diversity, and the First Amendment, to join with me in boycotting these brews.”
He may get quite a following, judging by the comments left on many of the articles that appeared in the press over the last 48 hours about this controversy. The overwhelming majority were against this imposition of “gay rights” into the parades.
“What is being done here has nothing to do with ‘equal rights’,” wrote one commenter on the New York Daily News site. “This is bullying plain and simple because you aren’t being permitted to advertise your sexual preference in a time honored parade. I can understand this stance if others were being permitted to march under their own flags but how can this be considered equal when gays are trying to impose and advertise their sexual preferences when NO ONE ELSE IS ADVERTISING THEIR OWN AGENDAS? Find another venue to do this at and not the St. Patrick’s Day parade which welcomes everyone to march together to honor St. Patrick and not for any other ulterior motive.”
This commenter on the USA Today article was even more blunt in his criticism of the gay community. “You are being boorish and bullish. I’m quickly getting fed up with this crap. You scream about your rights, stop taking mine.”
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