Gayborhood bars yank Yuengling from shelves after brewer voices support for Trump

Bars in the Gayborhood have taken a stand against Donald Trump, and are pulling one of the state’s most iconic drinks from their shelves.

U Bar and Tavern on Camac have stopped serving Yuengling, and canceled all future orders for the lager, both bars confirmed. Woody’s is working on doing the same, state Rep. Brian Sims told Metro Thursday. Woody’s management could not be reached for a comment.

Our civic and sacred duty to hold onto hope

Talk It OUT: LGBTQ Voices In A Queer Election Year

Tavern on Camac and U Bar are owned by the same company, Tavern Group.

Sims, who represents the area, first called on the neighborhood’s bars to stop serving the brew on Facebook after Trump’s son Eric toured the Pottsville, Pa.-based breweryMonday, and its owner Richard Yuengling expressed support for the Republican candidate.

“Our guys are behind your father,”Yuengling said. “We need him in there.”

Sims isn’t happy. He led the charge first on Facebook, calling on bar owners to stop serving the brew in afired-up post. Then, he started making phone calls.

“The first calls I made were to the Yuengling company. I tried to reach Dick Yuengling, I tried to reach the marketing department,”Sims said. “Then, I reached out to the gay bar owners [in Philadelphia].”

An admitted lifelong fan of Yuengling, Sims explained that he can’t continue contributing money to a company that supports Trump and his ideology.

“Today, in the sort of Hobby Lobby world we live in, we have to accept that the dollars we put into the market might come back to us as advocacy,” Sims said. “It’s coming back from people who want to harm us.”

Yuengling, both the fifth-generation scion and the brewery that bears his family name, are no strangers to political controversy. The staunch conservativeserved as a delegate for George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philly. Hethreatened to close the brewery in 2007 if his employees didn’t decertify their local Teamsters union. His brew was reportedly banned from Gov. Tom Wolf’s swearing in after Teamsters declared a boycott.

“Because of a great company like Yuengling,”Trump said during his daylongtour of Western Pennsylvania, “workers can educate their kids and live a prosperous lifestyle.”

Trump jumped on his father’s common rhetoric, blaming high taxes and Obamacare for “destroying” American businesses, the Reading Eagle reported.

“My father’s going to make it a lot easier for business to function,” Donald Trump’s third child said. “We’re going to do it right here in the U.S.”

Meanwhile, Sims said it’s time to give another beer a chance to be Pennsylvania’s unofficial ale.

“Philly’s gay bars and Center City bars in general are among the biggest sellers of Yuengling in the Commonwealth, and Yuengling is one of the most prevalent beers on tap…I would love to find one of the many microbreweries or Philadelphia breweries to replace Yuengling,”he said. “I’m sure we’re going to spend a lot of time figuring out what to replace Yuengling with and I’m excited about that conversation.”

Sims added that he’ll be traveling to his hometown of Downingtown Friday and plans to stop at Victory Brewing Company, which is headquartered there.

Yuengling’s support of the Republican nominee comes just a day after the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations held a hearing on racism in the city’s LGBT black and brown community.

Last month, a leaked video surfaced of iCandy owner Darryl DePiano saying the n-word; it sparked several weeks of protests over racial tension in the community.

“Clearly, the Gayborhood is in need of a lot of understanding and a lot of solidarity,”Sims, the first openly gay member of the state legislature, said. “This could be one of those ways that we stand up together and say, ‘Hey, I’m not going to give my dollars to a man who says Mexicans are rapists, or people of color are living in squalor, or that I, as a gay person, should be subject to abuse as a form of conversion therapy.

“I believe that the same type of racism that we saw from the owner of iCandy is the same kind of racism we see from Donald Trump.”