X-post from LGBT: What happens when a gay bar decides it no longer wants to be gay?

[TexasTowelie]

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Red Room, a bar on the Fourth Street gay strip in Austin, is accused of turning away gay patrons after the owners brought in a new promoter.

Josh Moon (above), a gay former bartender at the Red Room, tells KVUE-TV that he quit on Friday after watching his friends get turned away at the door:

“They pulled all the bartenders in the back and they said, ‘Well, we’re not going to call this a gay bar anymore, we’re going to call it a straight bar,’” Moon said.

Gay patrons say on that night, they were kicked out of Red Room.

Speaking via a lawyer, the owners tell KVUE a private party rented the bar for the night and it was the private party that kicked people out, which is within their legal right.

However, Moon says a Facebook invite for the night in question does not mention a private event, instead calling it a “Grand Opening” that would last for the next several weekends.

“I think they were going to make it a continued thing and bring these people back every weekend, because that’s how they made it sound to us,” says Moon.

The story doesn’t mention the fact that excluding gay patrons would be a violation of the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations. And it’s unclear whether anyone has filed a complaint.

More, including video, at http://www.dallasvoice.com/gay-bar-decides-longer-gay-10153309.html .

Cross-posted in LGBT Group.

[Vogon_Glory]

1. Well, Their former clientele goes on-line and...

What happens is--that bar's former clientele goes on-line and starts spreading the word around about their shabby treatment at what was a favorite watering hole. Then former patrons and friends and acquaintances take their business somewhere else. At which point the market forces the right-wing nuts profess to admire kicks in.

I am not dismissing legal action, but I do think that running off your former customers and then trying to burst out into a crowded field of heterosexual bars is probably a stupid, risky thing to do. Downtown Austin isn't Montrose, Oak Lawn, or Castro Street with gay bars chock-a-block next to each other.

And the owner paid big bucks to the promoter for this sort of idiocy?

The discrimination issue aside, I seriously question his/her business judgement. Bad ideas often have bad consequences for the people who make them. That's one of the things market forces often do. The promoter may get his or her fees, but the owner risks taking a big financial hit for going with a bad idea and for bigotry.