'Love comes in all flavours': Ben & Jerry's bans two scoops of the same flavour in gay marriage protest
Popular ice cream chain Ben & Jerry's is barring customers at its Australian stores from ordering two scoops of the same flavour in a protest over marriage equality.
The ban on the same-same scoops has come into force at all 26 Ben & Jerry's ice cream parlours across Australia to bring attention to the LGBTQI community's lack of marriage equality.
"Imagine heading down to your local Scoop Shop to order your favourite two scoops of Cookie Dough in a waffle cone. But you find out you are not allowed – Ben & Jerry’s has banned two scoops of the same flavor [sic]. You'd be furious!" the company wrote in a statement on its website.
"But this doesn't even begin to compare to how furious you would be if you were told you were not allowed to marry the person you love.
"So we are banning two scoops of the same flavor [sic] and encouraging our fans to contact their MPs to tell them that the time has come – make same sex marriage legal!
"Love comes in all flavours!"
The ice cream company started by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in the 1970s has always had progressive bent, including a social impact clause in its mission statement that recognises the role business "plays in the structure of society by initiating innovative ways to improve the quality of life of a broad community".
It has long-supported marriage equality, despite the risk of putting off some of its more conservative customers.
Cohen once remarked: "When you go to work in the morning you shouldn't have to leave your values at the door."
Ben & Jerry's has also joined more than 1200 companies and organisations, including Qantas, Holden, the major banks and football codes, calling for marriage equality in Australia.
Coinciding with the ban, the company has rolled out postcard boxes for customers to issue postal protests to MPs in an effort to get some action on marriage equality in accordance with the will of 72 per cent of the Australian population.
The company is calling for a free vote on marriage equality in parliament, rather than the promised plebiscite that has seemingly slipped off the national agenda.
The American ice cream chain has been a strident supporter of the marriage equality movement around the world, Gay Star News reports.
In 2012 it teamed up with a gay rights group in the UK and renamed one of its flavours "Appily Ever After" and put two grooms on its packaging.
In a similar move in Germany, Ben & Jerry's joined 60 organisations in support of gay marriage called Ehe Für Alle and temporarily renamed its Cookie Dough ice cream "Yes I Dough".
Ben & Jerry's was one of a number of companies that signed a submission to the US Supreme Court in 2015 urging for the nationwide legalisation of same-sex marriage.
When the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage constitutional in the same year, Ben & Jerry's renamed a flavour "I Dough, I Dough".
