Well, we’ve been wondering all this time why New York didn’t make it onto that Advocate Top 10 Gay cities list -- perhaps we now know why. Just ask 27-year-old lesbian Khadijah Farmer.

Farmer was hanging out at the Caliente Cab Co., a Greenwich Village landmark with a giant margarita sloshing above its patio seating, having a drink with her girlfriend and a few friends. When she needed to use the restroom, she did what any self-respecting young woman would do: She got up and went to the women's room.

Apparently, a patron who saw Farmer go in took umbrage, thinking she was a man. According to Farmer, the woman said, "This is a women's bathroom." To which Farmer, sensibly enough, replied, "I know that. Thank you. This is where I'm supposed to be."


(Click here to see a photo of Farmer in front of the restaurant).

While she was doing her business in the Ladies', a bouncer for Caliente's came in and began pounding on the door of her stall, demanding that she leave. She offered to show him her… driver's license (please, this Khadijah Farmer is a decent, dignified individual), but he refused. And then he threw her, her girlfriend, and the rest of their friends out of the restaurant.

Now, I've been to Caliente's before, and it is right in the middle of the most densely homo-populated part of Manhattan. Never mind the fact that the bouncer would have been overreacting even if Farmer had been a man. I mean, come on! There were stalls, after all -- it's not like most female bar-goers in Manhattan haven't shared bathroom space with guys before. But anyway, she wasn't -- er, isn't -- a man, and if her account is true, she dealt with the situation politely and without fuss.

Which is exactly the opposite of what I would have done, I fear. I'd have made a fuss, wadded up a paper towel and thrown it, stamped my little feet and done a completely ineffectual job of making my case. But let's hear it for Khadijah Farmer, a woman who works as a counselor for people with disabilities, who comported herself perfectly in the face of discrimination, and who deserves way better than the treatment she got. Yeah.