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.
Watch the KVUE report below.