Guinness & St. Patrick's Day 2014

"Guinness has a strong history of supporting diversity and being an advocate for equality for all. We were hopeful that the policy of exclusion would be reversed for this year’s parade. As this has not come to pass, Guinness has withdrawn its participation. We will continue to work with community leaders to ensure that future parades have an inclusionary policy."



Heineken and Boston Beers withdrew their participation in the St. Patrick's parades in New York City and Boston. So did the key sponsor Guinness, Boston's mayor Marty Walsh and New York City's mayor Bill de Blasio. They reacted to the organisers of the parades who prohibited LGBT participants to carry signs or banners that identified them as who they are (via).



The Guinness commercial Men and women shouldn't live together from 1995 showing a gay couple was banned before it became a YouTube sensation 17 years later (via).

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photograph (Ashland University, 1973) via