Miller has a very long history of gay marketing, starting in San Francisco in the mid-1970s with sponsorship of the leather-oriented Folsom Street Fair and later Pride Parades.

Early ads began in 1979 in New Orleans' Impact magazine and later in the The Blade in Washington DC. OUT won these national ads in 1994 -- an extension of the mainstream "Life is Good" campaign. Later campaigns have included a tongue-in-cheek series of paper dolls.

Miller Brewing Co., along with Anheuser-Busch, have the distinction of being among the few companies that advertises in gay media and also have a mainstream media commercial with a gay theme.

Beer companies are well represented in The Commercial Closet, largely due to an effort in the mid-1990s to pull away from the industry's longterm sexist advertising themes that objectified women. Such commercials were summed up by the Swedish Bikini Team ads from Stroh Brewing Co. for Old Milwaukee. Looking for new material to mine, brewers began extensively playing with gay and transgender themes in their advertising. However, because beer drinkers are stereotypically macho, the tone of many of the ads were more negative.