(link to the Free Republic thread)
Posted on 09/01/2013 11:53:17 AM PDT by narses
PORTLAND – A Portland bar owner has been ordered to pay about $400,000 to a group of transgendered people he banned from his establishment last year.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries civil rights division imposed the penalty against Chris Penner, owner of the Twilight Room Annex, the Oregonian reported Friday.
Eleven people will share in the penalty, with amounts ranging from $20,000 to $50,000.
It’s the first penalty imposed under the 2007 Oregon Equality Act, which protects the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Oregonians in employment, housing and public places. Some other complaints ended in settlements.
The bureau’s civil rights division began investigating the bar formerly known as The P Club last year after Penner left a voice message for one of the T-Girls, a social group for transgendered people that went to the bar on Friday nights.
According to the complaint filed with the bureau, the message said: “People think that a.) We’re a tranny bar, or b.) We’re a gay bar. We are neither. People are not coming in because they just don’t want to be here on a Friday night now.”
The complaint listed 11 aggrieved persons, 10 of whom present as women. Their legal names are not given.
The T-Girls said they were devastated and humiliated. They said they went to the bar every Friday for two years because they felt safe there – the bartender treated them well, and bouncers walked them to their cars as they left.
“The individuals had found a place at the P Club where they found they could share their lives, their stories,” Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian said. “When that is stripped away, that is an indignity that is severe.”
Penner denied last year that he is biased but said other customers complained that the T-Girls left the stall doors open and seats up in the women’s restrooms and business had dropped.
Penner’s lawyer, Jonathan Radmacher, said his client was not surprised by the decision: Avakian brought the complaint, and his deputy affirmed it.
“The writing was on the wall,” Radmacher said, “but we went through the process because we thought it was important that the facts came out.”
Too many lawyers are destroying America. They’re the enablers of everything that is wrong with society.
That doesn’t mean all lawyers are bad — just too many of them are dirtbags.
(link to the Free Republic thread)
I don’t see any indication in the article that the bar owner banned transgender groups on the basis of his religious beliefs or other rights protected by the Constitution. And if constitutionally protected rights were not violated by this Oregon law then this is not a 14th Amendment issue imo.
If the citizens of Oregon don’t like this law then it’s up to them to work with their local and state lawmakers to make such laws more citizen-friendly.
And citizens in other states who don’t want such situations to happen in their states better get off of their couches and work with their local and state government prepresentatives to make state laws which compliment their constitutionally protected rights.
That struck me too. Other customers stopped going there, thinking it was a gay or trans-whatever establishment. Interesting to think about what rights, if any, the business owner has, if a group of oddballs gives his place a bad reputation.
Apparently the business owner has very few legal rights in this situation. He has to service the trans-whatever group, even if a critical mass of such people drive away others.
Oregon has been this way for decades.
“The T-Girls said they were devastated and humiliated.”
You ever notice that its always a case of devastation and humiliation. etc. with lefty groups? Not just gay groups, but pretty much every left wing group that is unhappy about something. It’s never “we don’t like this” or “we are unhappy about that”, but outraged, humiliated, put upon in manner most cruel, etc. Frankly, the histrionics involved often irritate me more than whatever the underlying issue happens to be in these cases.
> If the bar owner was smart, how many ‘tough guys’ could he have pulled in on Friday nights? Offer some drink specials to people who would take issue with trannies. Problem solved, with little or no liability to the bar. After giving some of the perverts a thrashing in the parking lot, they would take their business elsewhere.
^ I think this sums up my feelings about the best solution
I think the next time this happens, the friers and grill should mysteriously stop working. Just kick everyone out, and open again the next day.
Sooner or later the public is going to get real tired of this dog and pony show.
People pollution is bad for business. They wanted to destroy his business.
He needs to spend a hundred grand and let contracts on all the wackos and their lawyers.
“All that civil rights acts crap rush and beck andany here laud led directly to this”
That’s how I think about this, too. If the government can tell any private business who he has to serve then the government can tell the business to serve anybody. I would love to hear a logical argument on why this is bad but the government forcing a business to serve blacks is good.
The state would lift their liquor license for being a nuisance.
> Too many lawyers are destroying America. They’re the enablers of everything that is wrong with society.
That doesn’t mean all lawyers are bad — just too many of them are dirtbags.
Now its either get sued or taken to jail for standing up for what’s right agInst the mentally ill left just the way they wanted it. I think I can take a little jail time for beating the snot out of a gay pedophile if it saves some boys from being interned into faggots.
I can remember when many establishments [stores, restaurants, etc., for those in Rio Linda] frequently had a sign:
“We have the right to refuse service to anyone.”
Many restaurants also had:
“No shoes, No shirt, No service.”
From a more informative link:
“The penalty is the first imposed under the 2007 Oregon Equality Act, which protects the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered residents of the state in employment, housing and public places, the newspaper noted.”
Total BS if you ask me.
Maybe more like a YMCA state!
Since FDR.
The people own everything collectively now. We have Democratic communism.
Even you are the property of the state. You can pay them about $450 (citizenship renounciation fee) and they'll allow you to go free, though.
Where are the bikers when you need them? :^)
Wow, gays use the pink triangle as their symbol.
There’s the problem - why did they even have cars to go back to?
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