It's a game of he said/he said with this story of a gay couple being kicked to the curb by a cabbie. Paul Bruno and his partner were allegedly embracing in Medhat Mohamed's cab Monday night in the East Village, when they say the driver tossed them, declaring: "Hugging is not allowed in here!"
The NY Post tracked down Mohamed, who told them, "I wanted to pay attention to getting them to their destination instead of worrying if they were going to have sex or not. They kept hugging and kissing. He was almost sitting on his lap. And I said, 'OK, guys, come on, I'm driving.'" He claims he gave them the option of staying in the cab if they could keep their hands off each other, but Bruno says this never happened.
Mohamed says he would have taken the same route if it had been a heterosexual couple, and the owner of his taxi medallion told the paper, "in our religion, we can't handle that stuff. There's no kissing allowed in the cab. A man has to be a man."
The Taxi and Limousine Commission is investigating, and the agency head says "the outcome of this process has the potential to be severe for the driver in question, and could very well include the revocation of his TLC license."
