by James A. Bacon
With considerable fanfare by Governor Glenn Youngkin, Armed Forces Brewing announced six days ago that it would relocate its headquarters from Annapolis, Md., to Norfolk, creating 47 local jobs. The company, which markets its beer by adopting a rough, often profane language prevalent in the military, says it will hire veterans for 70% of its workforce.
Good news, right?
Not for some people. Within days, opposition surfaced. Norfolk Councilwoman Andria McClellan has said Armed Forces may have a tough time getting business permits from the City Council, according to WHRO. The company’s offense? Supposed misogyny in its ads and anti-LGBQT+ statements by the president.
Misogyny? Apparently, CEO Rob O’Neill, a retired Navy SEAL, fired guns in an ad flanked by a woman in skimpy military-themed costumes.
Anti-LGBQT+? Appearing on Fox News, O’Neill condemned the Navy’s use of a drag queen in recruitment ads after tweeting, “I can’t believe I fought for this.”
Hmmm. There’s a time-honored American tradition of hawking products from motorcycles to… beer by appealing to the target audience of younger males with bikini-clad models. Those ads aren’t for everyone. But they’re not meant to be. Is such advertising to be suppressed because some bluenose or hyper-feminist, for whom the ads are not intended, take offense?
As for using drag queens as a recruitment tool, that’s utter insanity. Does any person not suffering from psychotic hallucinations think that such ads will be anything but a turn-off to the primary demographic from which the military recruits? Or that drag-queen ads will bolster recruitment from the military’s all-important alternate-sexuality demographic?
But there’s a much bigger point. People are entitled to their views. People are entitled to criticize Armed Services Brewing. People are free to organize protest rallies and call for boycotts. Until recently, however, people have not been entitled to utilize a government power — denying special use permits — to squelch a company because of views expressed by company executives.
The foes of Armed Services Brewing do have one shred of an argument. The company is receiving unspecified incentives to move to Norfolk. “I feel like our taxpayer dollars are going toward a brewery that’s not a good fit for the community, forcing us to have an anti-trans brewery into the community,” said a protester quoted by WHRO.
But that argument cuts two ways. It can be used by anyone to oppose any business receiving incentives because every business does something to offend someone’s political sensibilities. The defining cultural characteristic of our era is an eagerness to take offense at imperceptible slights. Once leftists have set the precedent of using government permitting powers to cancel conservative expression, it takes no imagination to think that rightists will respond in kind. This is the path of madness.
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