Portland club changes name, labor bureau investigates its treatment of crossdressers
Published: Sunday, September 23, 2012, 1:48 PM Updated: Sunday, September 23, 2012, 6:40 PM
By Casey Parks, The Oregonian http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/09/portland_club_changes_name_but.html
PHOTO: Mike Zacchino / The Oregonian
The Twilight Room Annex, formerly known as the Portsmouth Club, at 5262 N Lombard is being investigated for its treatment of transgender customers.Nearly 50 years after the first Portsmouth Club sign went up, Chris Penner painted a new name on the North Lombard Street bar. This, Penner said in mid-September, is the Twilight Room Annex. The P Club -- the shortened name Penner has used for two years -- is dead, he said.
But a name change won't erase the controversy Penner created in July when he called a group of transgender women and told them not to come back to the bar.
"You can't just kick people out of bar because they're an unpopular class of people," said the T-Girls' lawyer, Beth Allen. "I think he thought because perhaps some of his patrons have a negative view of transgender individuals, that that gave him the right to kick them out. If this were a rowdy group -- I don't care if they were transgender or truckers -- you could kick them out. But they weren't."
Penner legally could have booted the T-Girls prior to 2001, when Portland enacted a law banning discrimination against gay and transgender people in employment and public places. The Legislature passed a similar ban for the whole state in 2007. Since then, the labor bureau has received 147 complaints of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Allen, their lawyer, says the group was always respectful.
"The most noise they ever made was if somebody got a good shot in shuffleboard, someone might have let out a whoop," she said. ". Their goal was to have a good time, not to lead some sort of charge. They were very thoughtful about how they used the bathroom. They did not leave seats up."
