This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News
Carolina lawmakers frown on ‘Polygamy’ beer
The North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission has banned the sale of a popular Utah beer called ‘Polygamy Porter’ in the state on the grounds that polygamy itself is illegal.
The beer has been brewed by Wasatch Brewery in Utah since 2001 and is currently sold in 20 states but in applying for a licence to sell the beer to a bar in North Carolina, the alcohol commission failed to see the funny side and aid in a rejection letter: “Polygamy is illegal. Therefore these products will not be approved.”
The branding for the beer features a collage of modified classical paintings to depict a man surrounded by some scantily clad women alongside the tag line, ‘why have just one?’
This is (one hopes) a suggestion to have a couple of beers but it also plays on the association between Utah and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) who famously used to practice polygamy.
Mormons are not now allowed to have multiple wives and members of the church can be excommunicated if they do and polygamy is illegal in all 50 US states.
A spokeswoman for the brewery, Lauren Boyack, said: “We are in on the [polygamy] joke here in Utah. It’s just a fun beer name and it certainly is not meant to promote illegal activity.”
The brewery plans to appeal the decision at a hearing next month.
This from North Carolina, the state where the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre took place in 2012 and where it remains legal to buy the military grade semi-automatic used to kill 26 people, including 20 children aged just 6-7 years old. By the same logic the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission would have to approve a beer with a label depicting bullet-riddled children on the grounds that “Assault rifles are legal. Therefore these products will be approved.”
Tom, the Sandy Hook shooting took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
You’re right, of course, but Sandy Hook was directly responsible for gun control bills being filed in North Carolina every legislative session since the the shooting, even though not one has even reached a committee hearing! Don’t want to turn this into a gun law thread, just wanted to point out the absurdity of the legislators reasoning. And it’s not just North Carolina, the last time I was in Michigan I was told there are more guns in Detroit than people!