Gorge area's first porn shop protested

THE DALLES, Ore. — Lois Thienes believes she has a moral obligation to keep pornography out of The Dalles, as do many of the more than 300 people who have spent the past six months trying to shame customers away from the first pornography store in the Columbia River Gorge.

The protesters, mostly local churchgoers, have organized into a nonprofit group they call Concerned Citizens Against Pornography.

"I'm doing it more for the community," Thienes said. "This is such a nice town."

The Adult Shop is visible from Interstate 84 and next to a just-opened Home Depot. It's in an innocuous brick building resembling a small video-rental store. But the covers of the videos show graphic depictions of sex.

The Dalles is one of only a handful of towns in Oregon with 12,000 or fewer people to have a business specializing in adult materials. The others are Astoria, Coos Bay and Rice Hill.

That compares with an estimate of more than 200 such businesses across Oregon, according to supporters of a failed state ballot measure in 2000 to allow zoning of adult operations.

Oregon law allows adult businesses as it would any other retail store. Opponents have little recourse other than to find a way to drive the shops out of town.

"Essentially, there are no laws explicitly regulating adult stores in terms of location and its contents, with the exception of child pornography," said Kevin Neely, a state Department of Justice spokesman.

The Columbia River Gorge had no X-rated stores until the Adult Shop opened May 5 in The Dalles.

Concerned Citizens Against Pornography recently put up an anti-adult-store billboard near the shop. The group also boasts its own bumper stickers reading: "Not in our town."

The Dalles protesters have looked to Oregon City as their model of success after a group of neighbors and church members in the town of 27,200 helped persuade a pornography store there to go elsewhere in 2003. They protested for six months before the owner moved from the McLoughlin neighborhood to southeast Portland.

When reached at his ice-cream store in Veneta, Adult Shop owner Gary Goin wouldn't comment about the siege in The Dalles. "I don't talk to people about my business," he said.