We interrupt this blogfast for a public service announcement. Quite unexpectedly, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has responded to an earlier post regarding their support for a Chico abortion mill. Here’s the e-mail I received last Tuesday:
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Mr. Culbreath,
I wanted to take the time to contact you regarding a recent blog post and your concern with our sponsorship of The Women’s Health Specialists.
Sierra Nevada supports many federally regulated non-profit organizations, and have a long history of charitable giving in our community. We assist hundreds of local and national organizations that make contributions to our community, many times (as in this example) with the donation of beer for an event.
Many organizations we support, The Women’s Health Specialists among them, provide free screening of breast and cervical cancer to women who might otherwise not receive the attention and care they need. Additionally, this organization provides adoption education, menopause services, fertility health services, and health services for men, as well as many other education services.
When choosing organizations to support, we try to focus on the larger picture when making donations to our community. The support we give goes to a myriad of needed services (not just one) that might not be available for our community if we had not supported them.
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. concentrates its charitable giving on education, the environment, and the promotion of children’s and family issues. We strive toward responsible corporate citizenship and give back to our community in ways we feel benefit it.
I hope this addresses your concerns, and explains Sierra Nevada’s charitable contribution philosophy.
Respectfully,
Sierra J. Grossman
Brand Manager
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
1075 East 20th St
Chico, CA 95928
Tel: (530) 893-3520
Fax: (530) 893-1275
www.sierranevada.com
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Dear Ms. Grossman,
Thank you for taking the time to respond. Clearly, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company cares about the community of Chico and would like to better the lives of its neighbors. I am especially pleased to learn that your company focuses on “the promotion of children’s and family issues”.
May I suggest that children are not particularly well-served by killing them? May I also suggest that families are not particularly well-served by eliminating their youngest members?
You claim that Sierra Nevada Brewing Company looks at the “big picture” when making donations. In this you seem to be saying that you don’t mind helping an organization kill babies so long as it also screens for breast and cervical cancer and does other good things for people. Clearly this is absurd.
Perhaps the directors of your company really haven’t given the abortion issue much thought. If that is truly the case, then you may want to help educate them on the matter. Here’s a good place to start. Here’s another. And here’s another.
No amount of good that is done by an abortion mill can justify your company’s moral or financial support. Anyone who needs cancer screening or other health services can find plenty of help in Chico. Even if they could not, these services are not worth taking the life of even one innocent unborn child.
I am confident in saying that the pro-life community in northern California and beyond – many of whom are hearty beer drinkers – will simply choose not to consume Sierra Nevada products until such a time as your company retracts its support for Women’s Health Specialists and similar organizations.
Sincerely,
Jeff Culbreath
Orland, California
New Sherwood 
Here, here!
Well said.
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Excellent reply, amigo.
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Very well-stated. You have given them much to consider. The fact that they responded at all shows their commitment to their community, and to their image in the community. I hope they will reassess their thinking about this particular sponsor.
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You’re second paragraph is a classic. I hope they revisit this decision, because Sierra Nevada is good beer.
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Jeff,
Great response. I was actually thinking of you this week when I went to the store and saw the appealing packaging of Sierra Nevada’s new seasonal winter brew.
I wanted to buy some. But then I thought of your post, and opted against it. I’ve got an ever-increasing alcohol budget, and it’s a shame I have to keep them off the list.
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Jeff;
I linked to this posting here:
http://oneoarinthewater.blogspot.com/2007/10/sierra-nevada-brewing-company-supports.html
Stay in the fight brother!
BD
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Boycotting Miller was no issue. I’ve never been a big fan of that swill. I will miss drinking pints of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Porter. My extended family will also miss these fine beers.
Let us know when Sierra Nevada no longer financially supports abortion.
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Jeff, I saw this a while back and meant to comment. First off, well answered. Your comments remind me of the truth that there is no moral autoclave that can separate good uses from bad when one donates to an organization involved in abortion. In other words, you *can’t* morally make a donation to PP or another “women’s clinic” with the proviso that your donation only be used for health screenings. Doing so is directly freeing up other funds to be used for abortion, regardless of your directives.
Second, I’m an old pro at avoiding certain beers since I was involved with Jim Koch of Samuel Adams Breweries (truly one of the most arrogant SOBs on the planet). He wrote me not one but TWO personal letters full of vitriol because I was leading a boycott of sponsors of “Nothing Sacred” on ABC. His letters were off-the-cuff and loaded with vitriol and personal attacks. (I thought to myself at the time, doesn’t this guy have anything better to do?) Since that time, for obvious reasons, I haven’t touched Sam Adams, which was once my preferred brew. Ah, well, as long as Harp, Boddington’s, Fat Tire, Guinness, and Newcastle are around, I shan’t go wanting.
See you on Saturday for the baptism — Godspeed!
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I disagree with your response, sir. To my mind it appears that you cling to a single minded aspect of one of many charitable contributions by the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Labeling The Women’s Health Specialists, “abortion mill” in light of other services rendered which in many cases are to avoid actually aborting pregnancies appears somewhat naive. The statement labels those who charitably donate their time to the organization by proxy. I think the idea is somewhat misguided that those who provide a service desire that end over other means such as adoption, birth control, contraception, or abstinence. This appears more a religous-moral concern, and self righteous justification of misguided judgement. You avoid in your response that the company clearly makes no distinction over which services it supports, pointing out myriad services provided by these organizations to those without alternative sources to obtain care. To make rhetoric of serving the family by “eliminating its youngest members,” or serving children by killing them clearly shows that you are not interested in the big picture. On a global scale abortion does not eliminate families, or family structure, and in-fact population control is a far larger concern. I have never had a child aborted, and I personally don’t consider abortion a solution, but I am also not supplying ready alternatives. Just half a century ago the issue wouldn’t have been abortion, it would have been contraception. Then the company in question could have failed your standards of charitable contribution and morality by supporting a practice that on large scale prevents one of many causes for abortion to begin with.
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I have visited justthefacts.org and I found it solidly deceptive. A fact is something that can be proven or observed, but justthefacts.org is full of nothing but opinions, sometimes expert ones, but opinions. It should not claim that these are facts.
Abortionfacts.com is just as bad. People don’t focus on the primitive streak as a “thinly-veiled attempt to dehumanize” the embryo. It’s a legitimate question about when life and humanity begin and when the developing human gets a soul. Many different, intelligent people have come to different conclusions about it, and there is no observable fact that can prove who is right and who is wrong.
Call a fact a fact. Call an opinion an opinion, even if it’s an expert one. Then people might not assume that you are trying to trick them. I’m sure that there are plenty of real abortion, pregnancy and human development sites out there. Propaganda, once identified, can be dismissed as a trick. Real facts cannot.
http://www.womenshealth.gov
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