THE DALLES — Lois Thienes watched three “darling little gals” enter the Adult Shop after sauntering past her and other protesters picketing the city’s first pornography store. “They wanted to make sure we saw them go inside,” Thienes said. “If my daughter went there, I’ll tell you . . .”

Never mind that Thienes is a grandmother, and her daughter is in her 50s.

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 people away from the adult store, visible from Interstate 84 and next to a just-opened Home Depot.

The protesters are mostly local churchgoers with a sprinkling of residents who aren’t affiliated with any particular church. They have organized 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’s innocuous brick building resembles a small video rental store inside. It’s clean and well-lighted. But the covers of the videos show graphic depictions of sex, and the rest of the store is filled with sex toys. There’s a darkened video arcade in the back.

Pornography stores and strip clubs are the types of places people usually associate with cities, not small towns — and statistically, they’re right.

The Dalles is one of only a handful of towns in Oregon with 12,000 people or fewer 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. Until then, the most eyebrow-raising event was topless women night at a bar in Hood River. The owner imported the women from Portland.

When word spread through The Dalles that a proposed newsstand and general store approved by the city had changed its name at the last minute to the Adult Shop, opponents turned to prayer, held a vigil at the site and then began the protests.

Concerned Citizens Against Pornography recently erected an anti-adult store billboard near the shop. The group also boasts its own yellow-and-black bumper stickers reading: “Not in our town.” Outside donations and “passing the jug” at church rallies have brought $3,800 to the fight.

“All we can really do is try to create a mild manner of embargo through protest,” said opponent Michael Tenney, a City Council member.

Protests have worked in a few places around the state, but most of the businesses end up staying. A few have closed on their own because of financial instability or bad locations.

Coos Bay residents protested an adult bookstore after it opened across from an elementary school near town about seven years ago. It’s still there, and the school has since removed a sign on its property criticizing the shop.

So far, people in the unincorporated enclave of Rice Hill along Interstate 5 north of Roseburg have yet to oust an adult shop that opened there in February. Many of the area’s 100 residents and people from nearby Yoncalla picketed on weekends for about a month.

Nude bar in Dufur closed

But Dufur, a town of about 600 people south of The Dalles, shut down a nude bar within two months of the opening.

A political action group of Dufur locals found no help from lawmakers in Salem, said City Recorder Maryln Sawyer, so residents turned to other means in 1993. They discovered that the owner had a series of aliases, so they printed the information and tacked it to the front door of the bar, Sawyer said.

“That’s what finally broke it,” she said. The owner closed shop and left town.

In Creswell and Seaside, a combination of short-lived protests and poor location drove stores there under, said those familiar with the businesses.

In The Dalles, the protesters have stood their ground as much as 12 hours a day on the sidewalk in front of the Adult Shop through 108-degree temperatures and confrontations with store customers.

On a recent day, a group of mostly senior citizen protesters included a nun, a Laundromat owner, a university library staffer, a teacher’s aide, a homemaker, a home health provider and a priest.

“What is it this shop is fulfilling for anybody?” asked the Rev. Todd Unger of St. Peter Catholic Church as he jotted down license plate numbers of customers.

Most protesters prefer to hold signs and wave. Recording license plates and other tactics such as snapping photos and videotaping cars have enraged some people.

Protesters threatened

A man threatened to get his gun after Judy Bartell, 78, told him politely that she wouldn’t remove his license plate number from her list. Sheriff’s deputies called by protesters searched the man and his car and found no weapons.

Charles Phillips, 83, said he thought a customer had broken his finger after the man grabbed and twisted Phillips’ hand for taking his picture. Phillips’ finger wasn’t broken, but police used the photographs to find the man and charged him with harassment.

Critics dismiss the protesters as “religious fanatics,” and others say the store has a right to be there.

“The Supreme Court says it’s a legal entity. What right do we have to say it’s not?” said Dorothy Davison, one of two City Council members who voted against a resolution opposing the store. “I do not shop there, but I do not think it is appropriate to pass a resolution against it.”

The resolution, approved 3-2 in May, has no legal bearing on the store, but the city attorney is researching laws that limit the location of such businesses, Tenney said.

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 Dalles siege. “I don’t talk to people about my business,” he said.

But the protesters said they’re making a difference. By their count, the number of customers has dropped from 68 a day in May to 47 in August.