The Battle of the Protected Classes

There's an interesting battle going on in New York City between a Muslim cabbie and an amorous gay couple. When protected classes collide:

THIS man does not deserve to be treated like a criminal.

Cabby Medhat Mohamed is the new poster boy for sexual intolerance in this libertine city. He's been branded by Council Speaker Christine Quinn as potentially the biggest bigot ever to scar the populace. Mayor Bloomberg labeled the distressed driver a "disgrace."

Mohamed faces the indignity of having his cab license yanked by the Taxi and Limousine Commission. He's already lost his job.

But Medhat Mohamed is no bigot, and he's not a disgrace.

He's also not a prude, a gay basher, a homophobe or the more colorful invective that's been lobbed in his direction by a chorus of yuppies with a large bone to pick.

All Mohamed did, he insists, was ask a gay couple to halt their hot-and-heavy antics in the back of his taxi. When they refused, he asked them to leave.

Mohamed says the couple's behavior was so distracting, he feared he might have an accident.

And now, after all the noise and bother, he would kick them out again.

"Losing your job, or losing your life -- which one is better?" he told me.

"I'm not going to judge them," said Mohamed, who is Muslim but says that has nothing to do with the principle here. "God will judge them."

Poor old Medhat is learning that although being Muslim was a big help to Major Hasan in that it protected him from scrutiny other would normally get for questionable behavior, he's not quite as far on the protected class scale as gay guys. You can pretty much discriminate against anyone with less danger than you can gay guys. They are the "it group" for preferences these days. I guess you could say gay is the new black.

Even blacks have lost some of the protected class allure they used to have. Now they're pretty much dumped in with Hispanics and any other racial minority, and for that matter women. Of course, if you have a black lesbian you've probably hit the protected class jackpot.

Medhat is screwed. He'll never get a job with a cab company in New York again, and now that he's been slandered by everybody up to and including Hizzoner, his only option now is probably to shoot up the local mall. At least then nobody will question his motives.