By examining newspaper articles, trade union pamphlets and visual iconography, the paper highlights how labour forces invited the LGBT community because their bars were a powerful tool in forming a gay identity and allowed LGBT consumers to utilise their economic agency. The workers’ strike demanded an end to the mandatory, homophobic polygraph tests to do so, workers went on strike and asked San Franciscan gay bars to boycott Coors beer. This paper examines the 1977 Coors beer boycott, to analyse the interplay of socio-political groups during 1970s America promoting the idea that labour and gay forces could form an alliance over economic disputes that were mutually beneficial. Kieran Blake is a postgraduate student of History at the University of Lincoln, researching twentieth-century American social movements-specifically addressing queer studies and the history of sexuality. Featured image courtesy of Online Archive of California Author Biography
