(Headline USA) The boycott of Anheuser–Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, continues to grow in the wake of its controversial partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
According to reports, at least five Chicago gay bars announced that they will no longer sell Anheuser–Busch products because of the way the company has responded to backlash. Bud Light should have stuck by Mulvaney instead of distancing itself from the transgender influencer, they argued.
“For 41 years Sidetrack has encouraged liquor and beer companies that have wished to garner the LGBTQ+ customer base to actively support our community,” Sidetrack Bar in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood said in a statement.
“Bud Light’s recent decision to drop the Dylan Mulvaney campaign, to put on ‘leave’ those who created it, as well as the statement by its CEO, wrongfully validates the position that it is acceptable to acquiesce to the demands of those who do not support the Trans community and wish to erase LGBTQ+ visibility,” it added.
The bar said it would continue to boycott Anheuser–Busch products until the company “can clearly demonstrate that they will not acquiesce to the voices of hate that wish to erase LGBTQ+ existence.”
Another vendor, 2Bears Tavern Group, which owns four bars in Chicago, announced its own boycott of Anheuser–Busch shortly after.
“Its CEO’s statement, in which he all but erased transgender people in favor of anti-trans vitriol, was cruel and hurtful,” 2Bears Tavern Group said in a statement of its own.
“CEO Brendan Whitworth’s excuse that Anheuser-Busch ‘never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people’ was tantamount to saying that the rights and safety of transgender people are topics worthy of debate,” it added.
Anheuser–Busch is already suffering from a boycott by conservative business and customers who slammed its partnership with Mulvaney as offensive and ideological. The boycott had successfully tanked Bud Light’s sales by 17% as of April 15.
