Don't mess around with gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender in Portland: The Bureau of Labor and Industries has ordered a North Portland bar owner to pay $400,000 to a group of cross-dressers he banned from his club last year, the agency said Thursday. http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/08/bureau_of_labor_and_industries_1.html
What the fuck ever happened to the right to refuse service? If I owned a bar and people stopped coming in and I was losing money because of a certain group of people, I would want them not to come back as well. Fuck Portland is a messed up place.
There is no right to refuse service based on protected categories. We have been around the block on this before. I'll bake them a cake!
Can I ask you a question? If you owned a business that's success was based on heterosexually challenged people frequenting it, but a few non heterosexually challenged individuals frequented your establishment in a way that drove that business you were counting on away, how would you handle it? I ask this because a business owner should have the right to earn a profit, and if a few people are causing that owner to lose his profit then what should he be bale to do about it?
Exactly. I'd honestly love to get crandc's opinion on what the owner should have done, or should be able to do
I don't know about now but years back that was a really rough bar. I remember one time being locked inside that place until 5am because a group of suspected gang members got into a fight with a softball team. They all went out into the parking lot and preceded to beat the shit out of each other with baseball bats. Since the fight started in the bar the police made everyone stay to take statements. I actually went home with one of the softball player's girlfriends because she was pissed at him for getting arrested.
So you think that, say, a business owner who sells a product that all strata of society has a use for should be able to refuse service to black people? Or red-heads? Or handicapped? Or Christian?
It depends on if those people, like some of the comments in the article said, were chasing away business. Then, yes. I do believe they should be able to refuse service to them. If a person in a wheel chair came into my bar and started mocking or making snide comments to the people not in wheelchairs......simply because they weren't in wheelchairs then I would ask the person in the wheelchair to leave.
Yes. People should be allowed to serve and not serve whomever they please. If they're stupid enough to do so, they should have that right. People should also have the right to advertise they were refused service and organize a boycott of said establishment.
Last I checked bar owners can still throw people out for unacceptable behavior. I'm not familiar with the incident, but if the cross-dressing patrons were being unruly and disturbing others (and not just because they were dressed differently) then the owner/employees should first tell the group to knock it off or they'll be thrown out. If they don't knock it off, they get thrown out and it's because of their disruptive behavior, not because of their clothing/sexuality/whatever. However, if patrons merely left because they were offended by the way another group of patrons dressed then that's an entirely different story.
I feel bad for both parties involved in this situation. The owner was clearly not acting from some bigoted stance, he hires a lesbian bartender and has the T-Girls at his establishment for a who year without ever doing or saying anything offensive. But he was losing business because other possible customers assumed the establishment was a Cross dressing bar. The T-Girls also are just trying to find a place to go out every week and lead a fun and happy social life. I don't know what the answer should be, but I would have hoped it could somehow have been fair to both sides. $400,000K seems too steep to me. This is just a bad situation.
$400,000 would bankrupt almost any bar. He should collectivize other bar owners into a political force to oppose Labor & Industries.
I went in there with a friend a couple of years back on a friday not knowing there were a ton of cross dressers in it. The place was packed and after a drink me and my friend just headed backs to Slims. I didn't even know there were cross dressers in the place until my friend mentioned it on the way back to slims. Since I didn't notice them they weren't being anymore obnoxious then the other people in the bar and it didn't seem like it was driving away buisness. I havent gone back but that's more to do with the fact I don't frequent bars anymore then anything else. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2
Based on the details in the article, it sounds like the bar owners contention of lost business was based on their presence rather than their behavior. "People think we're a gay bar, and we're not." If a business lost customers because black people frequented it and the white regulars didn't like them there, the owner would not be able to ban the black people from coming. This seems no different to me.
Well there is more than one way to refuse service to people. Like if you are there then he will be refusing to make a whole lot of others comfortable. Did you catch the code word.
