Gay activists protest popular New York restaurant

More than 50 gay activists protested outside the Caliente Cab Company in Manhattan yesterday in response to an incident in which a lesbian patron was allegedly kicked out of the restaurant after she was deemed too masculine to use the women's restroom.

Khadijah Farmer, 28, sports a close-cropped hairdo and fairly androgynous attire. She says she is commonly mistaken for a man in public restrooms but that a quick explanation is often all it takes to clear up any confusion. When she attended the popular West Village eatery on June 24th, however, she contends that the bouncer refused to heed her pleas or check her identification. Instead, she was unceremoniously rushed back to her seating area whereupon her entire party was told to leave.

"I was thrown out of the restaurant because of who I am and how I look," she said in a statement. "It was humiliating. No one should be subjected to that type of discrimination."

The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a suit on Farmer's behalf earlier this month seeking an injunction to bar the restaurant from discriminating on the basis of gender expression. The suit also seeks to expand current employment sex discrimination laws to include restaurants, bars, hotels, and other establishments that serve the public.

"Courts have ruled that you can't discriminate in the workplace based on stereotypes about gender, and our position is that this is no different," Farmer's attorney Michael Silverman explained to EDGE. "Here we have a restaurant saying 'You're too aggressive looking, you're too masculine looking to be in our restaurant and we're throwing you out.' That's completely intolerable. There are fundamental personal liberty issues at stake. Who gets to decide whether Khadijah has to wear lipstick, whether nail polish would soften her look, whether a set of pearls might make her look more feminine? She gets to decide at the end of the day, not a bouncer in some restaurant."

Caliente Cab Company could not be reached for comment, but the restaurant released a statement to the press denying any wrongdoing. "There has been no discrimination or violation of anyone's civil rights or human dignity by Caliente Cab Company or anyone employed here," the release said. The statement also claimed that the plaintiff's "primary interest" was money, citing Farmer's unspecified monetary damages.

Silverman called the claim baseless. "We've attempted to negotiate with them as best we could given their position, which has not been particularly open to negotiations," he said. "They keep claiming that we have the facts wrong and they didn't discriminate against anyone. But we do have the facts right and we haven't heard any differing facts from them that lead us to reassess."