In a push for marketing opportunities for Coors products back in the mid ’80s, managers realized that "[a]lienating gay beer drinkers was bad business as gays tended to drink more beer than the average beer drinker" (Silver Bullets, p. 163). As a result the Coors brewery itself has become great on gay issues. However, the advances for gays in the workplace at Coors "is more reflective of an effort to appeal to a particular segment of the beer-drinking market than of a change of heart on gay rights issues," according to People for The American Way (www.pfaw.org/issues/right/rw/coors.html). The family, and foundations that are funded by the family via profits from the brewery, continue to aim at derailing civil rights for the GLBT community. This schizophrenic approach to the GLBT community is purposefully confusing, to move attention away from the right-wing focus: e.g., a decision was made in 1993 to shift some of the right-wing-funding load away from the "Adolph Coors Foundation" and into the lap of the newly created, but less readily identified, "Castle Rock Foundation." Here are some of the tentacles of this family-controlled foundation, starting and ending with ones that reach deep into the Ann Arbor area (www.castlerockfoundation.org/CRReader.pdf).

Castle Rock’s Grants

Hillsdale College, 50 miles away in Hillsdale, Michigan, can afford to ignore federal education dollars, and so can avoid federal antidiscrimination requirements, because it has received millions of dollars from right-wing groups, including nearly a quarter-million beer-dollars per year from the Coors’ Castle Rock Foundation. The Hillsdale College website states "the dehumanizing, discriminatory trend of so called ‘social justice’ and ‘multicultural diversity’ … judges individuals not as individuals, but as member[s] of a group and … pits one group against other competing groups in divisive power struggles" (www.hillsdale.edu/collegehistory/missionstatement.htm). According to the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1999, ‘[t]here is no gay and lesbian coalition on [the Hillsdale] campus (‘If one tried to start up, the administration would shut it down,’ hazards one student)’" (cited in "Coors and the LGBT Community," Bruce Mirken for the National Lawyer’s Guild LGBT Committee, www.nlg.org/committees/lgbt/lgbt_coors_statement.htm). Jeffrey Coors, along with Amway’s Jay Van Andel, are trustees of Hillsdale College.

The Castle Rock Foundation has given millions of your beer-dollars to the Free Congress Foundation, a think tank that envisions how to create a conservative culture in the US. The website for this foundation includes a Declaration of Cultural Independence which states that "[t]elevision ‘normalizes’ every deviance, including homosexuality and the inversion of the traditional roles of men and women" (www.freecongress.org/centers/conservatism/decofculind.htm).

Jeff Coors was the chairman the year that Free Congress filed its friend of the court brief (Citizen Coors, p. 345). The Free Congress was funded and started up through the efforts of Joe Coors.

The Heritage Foundation, which was founded by and has received over a million beer-dollars from Coors-family foundations, has been instrumental in formulating the conservative agenda for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (Citizen Coors, pp. 105, 239). Heritage is also virulently anti-gay. According to Mirken:

When President Clinton proposed lifting the ban on gay and lesbian servicemembers in 1993, Heritage supported maintaining a full ban (not even "don’t ask, don’t tell"). In 1995 it slammed the Legal Services Corporation for "actions [that] advance the goals of homosexual activists"—by giving legal assistance to gay and lesbian couples seeking to adopt children. Later, Heritage strongly criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for striking down Colorado’s anti-gay Amendment 2 … which would have repealed local gay and lesbian civil rights laws and barred Colorado communities from ever enacting civil rights protections for gays and lesbians.

Other anti-gay groups receiving hundreds of thousands of beer-dollars from the Castle Rock Foundation include the Center for the Study of Popular Culture run by David Horowitz, who recently spoke at the University of Michigan campus and was protested by the campus’ Defend Affirmative Action Party (www.frontpagemag.com/horowitzsnotepad/2002/hn03-21-02.htm). Horowitz believes "left wing leaders of the gay community" are responsible for the spread of AIDS by promoting anonymous HIV testing over non-anonymous testing (See www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/horowitz/2001/dh06-11-01.htm).

Another Castle Rock recipient is The Media Research Center, dedicated to uncovering "liberal media bias" (www.mediaresearch.org/about/aboutwelcome.asp). L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of the Media Research Center, stated in a Jan. 30, 2002 column that creation of a gay cable channel "is a move to promote the homosexual lifestyle to the public"

(www.mediaresearch.org/BozellColumns/entertainmentcolumn/2002/col20020130.asp). Bozell also criticized PBS for showing the documentary about teenager Steve Cozza, who tried to change the Boy Scout policy banning gays (Mirken).

Now back to Ann Arbor: Castle Rock has provided hundreds of thousands of your beer-dollars to groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation who are litigating to end affirmative action at UM. Pacific Legal Foundation’s website states that they are "fighting the flawed logic inherent in the University of Michigan’s race- and sex-based admissions policies as part of this nationally publicized case central to the debate about the future of preference programs around the country" (www.pacificlegal.org). Another group supported by Coors money, The National Association of Scholars (NAS) states that they "filed an amicus curiae brief with the U. S. District Court in Michigan in support of two students who have brought suit against the University of Michigan for denying them admission on the basis of their race" (www.nas.org).

The Family Business

In addition, the Coors company is responsible for polluting Colorado rivers and creating toxic waste sites. The EPA has cited Coors as the PRP—Potentially Responsible Party—at the Lowry Superfund site. This landfill is owned by the City and County of Denver. In May 1992 the EPA stated that Coors was the "largest industrial polluter in the state of Colorado in 1990, having emitted 583,000 pounds of toxic emissions" (Silver Bullets, p. 243). "After killing more than ten thousand fish in Clear Creek [near Coors’ Golden, CO facility], Bill Coors told stockholders that the fish were only ‘trash fish,’ and a company spokesperson defended Coors by saying the stream ‘was not a prime fishing stream’" (Silver Bullets, p. 138). In August 2000, yet another spill caused further damage to the fish population in Clear Creek, which led to penalties of $100,000 after complaints about this and earlier violations, from the Colorado Dept of Public Health & the Environment, the EPA, and in public commentary (company statement at www.edgar-online.com/brand/aol/glimpse/glimpse.pl?sym=RKY).

Federal Elections Commission documents reveal that "the company itself is a substantial ‘soft money’ donor, almost exclusively to Republican Party committees," and reflects the family members’ political proclivities as well, according to Mirken. Coors company’s soft-money donations contrast with rival brewery Anheuser-Busch which gives almost an equal amount to both parties "to curry influence with any officeholder who might be in a position to influence key legislation" (Mirken).

Moreover, the Coors company’s support of individual political candidates favors far-right social conservatives, in contrast with Anheuser-Busch which makes donations to a roughly equal number of social moderates. Mirken states that "the company’s political donations seem to have followed the hard-right leanings of the Coors family," as exemplified by donations to Attorney General Ashcroft, Rep. James Rogan of California, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton. In addition to her opposition to key environmental regulations, Gale Norton is infamous for mounting an overtly homophobic defense of Colorado’s Amendment 2.

Extending the boycott

All this is why outraged activists anonymously placed anti-Coors flyers in some Ann Arbor/Ypsi copies of the gay newspaper Between The Lines last August. Ironically enough, they were branded as "terrorists" and likened to the far right-wing by members of Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project (WRAP). WRAP is a local gay organization that is breaking the boycott of Coors products ("Leaflet opens Coors beer dispute in Ann Arbor," Between The Lines, 9/6/01, p. 3). When the story of the anonymous leafleteers broke in the gay press, other GLBT community members decided to take a stand against bringing a Coors marketing salesman to speak at WRAP’s National Coming Out Day celebration held in late September (a privilege for which Coors donated $200 to WRAP). We formed a group called Queer Action Coalition (QUAC) and we soon learned that many local bars both gay and straight, such as the autbar, and even the venerated Ark, were selling Coors beer products despite the fact that the Coors family, beneficiaries and owners of Coors Brewery, are benefactors of many right wing efforts both locally in Ann Arbor and across the country.

In the circumstances, all groups need to continue to unite against the bigotry that undermines us, and renewing and continuing a boycott of Coors products will go a long way toward that goal. I recommend that you boycott all beer made or distributed by Coors.

RESPONSE TO ROSENBERG FROM COORS

May 3, 2002

To the Editor:

Mr. Rosenberg’s curious article on Coors Brewing Company, "Buy a Coors, Fund Attacks on Civil Rights," bears no resemblance to the real company noted by independent observers such as Fortune, Curve, The Advocate, the NAACP, Latina Style, Business Ethics, National Council of La Raza, the Gay and Lesbian Values Index, the Human Rights Campaign and Poz. Leading magazines and watchdog groups consistently rank Coors as one of the very best companies to work for -–particularly if you happen to be a person of color, a Latino or Latina, an Asian American, a lesbian or gay man, or a person living with a disability such as HIV/AIDS.

Our corporate policies reflect our bedrock belief in fairness and respect for all our customers, too. They also underscore why we generously sponsor gay nonprofit leaders like GLAAD and PFLAG, as well as many AIDS service organizations. Coors advertises in and supports gay community publications, as we have for years, as a bridge to our gay and lesbian customers. And, in February of this year, our company joined the Human Rights Campaign in support of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

Coors hires, retains and rewards one of the most talented and diverse workforces of any brewer in the world – through our commitment to diversity both within and outside the company. We adopted our nondiscrimination policy in employment for gays and lesbians more than twenty years ago. In 1995, we became the first – and until recently the only – major American brewer to offer equal benefits to the same-sex partners of our gay employees.

In addition, for the record, there is no connection between the policies, practices and contributions of Coors Brewing Company and those of Coors family members, the vast majority of whom have no role with the company. And no Coors company shares are owned by the Adolph Coors Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, or any private, family foundations – among the many facts left unchecked or simply ignored by Mr. Rosenberg.

Mr. Rosenberg’s story collapsed without a hint of balance. Our record of progress on diversity, and in the gay and lesbian community, is well established and widely reported. All of us have personal choices to make, and we hope the choices made by readers of Agenda are based on solid, factual and current information.

Sincerely, Rafael A. Fantauzzi

RESPONSE TO ROSENBERG: When is a Boycott Over?

We engage in boycotts to change a corporation or industry’s behavior. An effective boycott must put together a large coalition of people who believe in that boycott. The Coors boycott has always been an unlikely assortment of partners.

The original Coors boycott was a union boycott. It began in 1974. Gays, Lesbians, women’s groups, environmentalists, and others joined over the course of the next several years. This was not a period when unions were gay friendly organizations. I speak from experience. In 1976 I was gay and a union member. When the union won representation at the Golden, Colorado brewery, they declared the boycott over, to the horror of their coalition partners.

By the mid 1990’s a variety of local and national gay and lesbian organizations, including the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) declared that they no longer supported the boycott. GLAAD’s decision to end their boycott was based on the changes at Coors. From their 1998 press release:

To many of us in the gay and lesbian community the Coors boycott was about stopping harassment of gays and lesbians in the workforce. The most famous example at the time the boycott began was the claim that Coors made their employees take polygraph tests about their sexual orientation.

The Coors Brewing Company was the first major brewery to adopt a non-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation in 1978. They were also the first to adopt Domestic Partner Benefits in 1995.

Coors is a supporter of GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). They support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and have been praised by the Human Rights Campaign for their lobbying efforts on behalf of ENDA.

In other words, we won.

The \aut\ BAR is a known supporter of causes close to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered (GLBT) community. My partner, Martin Contreras and I are openly gay. Our decision to sell Coors products was not made in a vacuum.

We listened to the voices of our staff and customers. A few customers expressed reservations, but the vast majority believed in supporting a company that had changed to accept their GLBT employees.

We listened to the voices of GLBT employees of Coors. Without exception we heard of people who felt they worked in a supportive corporate culture. Ironically, several had never been out at work until working for Coors.

We listened to our national organizations. Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), HRC, and GLAAD are just a few of the organizations that have endorsed Coors as a gay-friendly corporation.

We listened to the voices of our local organizations. Coors has been generous to the Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project (WRAP) and the HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC).

I respect the voices of dissent in our community. Those voices can make us strong. I do not question that the Castle Rock Foundation is a right wing organization. However, if we "follow the money" in virtually any corporation in America we will find that boards and shareholders are dominated by conservatives. I do not think it is a surprise to anyone that corporate America is largely Republican and conservative.

Our answer to conservative foundations must be to continue to support the organizations of the GLBT community.

The fact that we have gotten the conservative scions of the Coors family to proffer Domestic Partner Benefits speaks to the economic power of our community. The company has made the changes we asked of them. It is now time to accept that the boycott is over, acknowledge that we won, celebrate our victory, and move on to more productive battles.

I agree with Rafael Fantauzzi and with Keith Orr that workplace conditions for GLBT people at Coors have improved since the company adopted a non-discrimination policy and domestic partnership benefits. Since I said as much in my article, we can set aside the bulk of Fantauzzi’s letter, which merely gives details abut these workplace improvements. His only substantial claim relevant to my article’s focus on the Castle Rock Foundation is untrue: that the Coors brewery has no connection to the political policies of the Coors family.