Following in the steps of gay men who once boycotted Coors beer and Florida orange juice, local D.C. bars are now shunning Yuengling beer after owner Dick Yuengling endorsed Donald J. Trump for president.
David Perruzza, the manager of JR.’s Bar & Grill, sparked the movement by posting a video of himself literally removing Yuengling’s beer tap.
“So, Richard Yuengling and his company feel they should support Trump,” Perruzza says in the video. “Well, this is a gay bar. And I am a gay bar manager, and we do serve Yuengling, but, from this point on, because Trump has Pence, and Pence is one of the biggest idiots ever, and very anti-gay, probably one of the most anti-gay politicians ever, I am doing this.” He then unscrews the tap head.
“We’re saying ‘bye’ to Yuengling at JR.’s. Just so you know, when people support things that don’t support us, we don’t support them. So, goodbye, Yuengling, you are the weakest link.”
Other area gay bars have since followed suit on social media, including Level One, who wrote “In light of Yuengling’s support of Donald Trump & Mike Pence, whose anti-gay views are in direct contrast to the gay lifestyle, Level One will no longer sell their product,” and The Green Lantern, which notes it has “taken the Yuengling tap off the bar effective immediately.”
Number Nine posted a video to Facebook of one of their bartenders emptying out Yuengling bottles into two large orange buckets, with the caption: “Byeeeeeee.”
Floriana Restaurant’s Dito Sevilla posted the following on Facebook:
Jon Parks, general manager at Ziegfeld’s/Secrets, was torn over whether to pull the lager from his shelves, noting that Dick Yuengling did not say he was endorsing the Trump-Pence ticket because of anti-LGBT views. Still, after consulting owner Alan Carroll, Parks yanked Yuengling from the bar.
“This in some ways brings back that time when I lived in Hollywood, and I did indeed go down Hollywood Boulevard in protest of Anita Bryant’s ridiculousness,” says Parks, referring to the former Florida Citrus Commission spokesmodel who spearheaded a 1977 campaign to rescind an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance in the state. The Yuengling boycott is the first he can remember based on a company’s support of a political candidate, rather than a company’s actions, such as support of an anti-gay ballot initiative. But he doesn’t foresee it setting off wars between liberals and conservatives over which bars they choose to support.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has reposted a CNN clip featuring Doug Wilson, leader of the Christian evangelical movement he follows, in which the pastor calls for making gay sex illegal.
“In the late ’70s and early ’80s, sodomy was a felony in all 50 states. That America of that day was not a totalitarian hellhole,” Wilson says in the seven-minute segment, reports the Daily Beast.
Wilson goes on to say he wishes the United States would revive anti-sodomy laws, which criminalized same-sex relations -- and, in some states, even certain non-vaginal sex acts between consenting heterosexual partners.
The Desperado LGBTQ+ Film Festival, a 16-year-old annual event hosted at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, has been canceled in "direct response" to President Donald Trump's executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at federally funded schools.
The festival, held each January at the college's Center for the Performing Arts, showcased films reflecting LGBTQ experiences and most recently featured seven feature films and seven shorts.
Trump's order requires colleges to end all DEI programs or risk losing federal funding. Organizers said Paradise Valley Community College could not afford to jeopardize its funding.
Andry José Hernández Romero, deported in Trump’s immigration crackdown, was freed from El Salvador’s CECOT prison in a prisoner swap but still faces danger.
Gay asylum seeker Andry José Hernández Romero, a makeup artist and costume designer deported to El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) maximum-security prison, was released on July 18 as part of a prisoner swap, NBC News reported.
The swap was brokered by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, who agreed to free more than 200 Venezuelans from CECOT in exchange for Venezuela releasing 10 American political prisoners.
Most released detainees had been deported from the U.S. after Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify removing hundreds of undocumented immigrants, alleging ties to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which constituted an "invading force" whose members were committing serious crimes.
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