
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 17, 1995                   TAG: 9509180076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-17   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COORS MAKES FOES RIGHT, LEFT

The Coors Brewing Co. is run by a family that has helped fund a conservative backlash against gay rights, but has become one of the first companies in the country to extend health benefits to the partners of its homosexual employees.

As a consequence, the corporation, whose annual beverage sales total $1.6 billion, finds itself boycotted both by gay and lesbian activists and by anti-gay Christian fundamentalists.

``It's tough,'' said Earl Nissen, a Coors executive who, as a member of the Lesbian and Gay Employee Resource (LAGER), helped persuade the company to adopt the new policy. ``We are caught between a rock and a hard place.''

It is too early to see how the conservative Christian boycott has affected the company, but the gay boycott, which has been in effect for more than a decade, has affected sales. ``We can't tell you how much we've lost,'' said Coors spokesman Joe Fuentes, ``but we know it has had an impact.''

The controversy illustrates the perils for a corporation whose profits and employee morale come in conflict with the personal ideology of important shareholders. It also shows, despite the strong disdain still felt for Coors by many homosexuals, how far the gay rights movement has come in winning corporate benefits that many gays and lesbians see as a big step toward full marriage rights for same-sex couples.

The Christian right and the gay protesters appear somewhat disoriented at finding themselves assailing the same enemy. Coors, for its part, says it stumbled into this predicament through sincere efforts to keep its employees happy and politically involved.

Coors' board of directors voted unanimously in May to extend full domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees, as it had earlier done for unmarried heterosexual employees living with a person of the opposite sex.

The move stunned conservative Christian groups that had been accustomed to Coors support for anti-gay rights efforts. Jeffrey Coors, the nephew of Coors Chairman William Coors and the brother of Coors chief executive Peter Coors, is chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington-based group that opposes the extension of any special rights to homosexuals.

Gay and lesbians still angry with the Coors family acknowledged that the company's decision to have a domestic partners program would encourage the conservative managers of other firms to do the same. The largest firms to make the change so far often have been entertainment and software companies, such as Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

by CNB