Boston Beer, the parent company to Sam Adams beer, has dropped its sponsorship of the Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade due to the parade's exclusion of LGBT organizations. The day after saying they were revisiting their corporate sponsorships, the group issued a statement to MassEquality, which posted it on their web site:
"We have been participating in the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade for nearly a decade and have also supported the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast year after year. We’ve done so because of the rich history of the event and to support veterans who have done so much for this country.
We were hopeful that both sides of this issue would be able to come to an agreement that would allow everyone, regardless of orientation, to participate in the parade. But given the current status of the negotiations, we realize this may not be possible.
We share these sentiments with Mayor Walsh, Congressman Lynch and others and therefore we will not participate in this year’s parade. We will continue to support Senator Linda Dorcena Forry and her St. Patrick’s Day breakfast. We wish her all the best in her historic stewardship of this tradition."
This comes one day after Boston Beer issued a statement saying that they were reconsidering their participation in the parade.
More and more corporations and organizations are realizing that LGBT discrimination is not only wrong, but bad for business and bad for service to the public.