THREE gay men have been left furious after they claim a kiss in the back of a taxi led to a torrent of abuse from the driver and resulted in them being thrown out.

THREE gay men have been left furious after they claim a kiss in the back of a taxi led to a torrent of abuse from the driver and resulted in them being thrown out.

Chris Bush said he felt intimidated, embarrassed and ashamed following the incident with the driver.

He said that the three had been discriminated against because of their sexuality and questioned whether the driver would have thrown out a man and a woman for sharing, what he claims was a quick peck on the lips.

The 31-year-old from Montgomery Road, Ipswich said: "It was like having things shouted at you in the street."

However the proprietor of Four One Seven cab company, Gordon Buck said that his driver said that the men had just gone too far, with what he considered to be far more than a peck and had been left upset by the incident.

The drama happened when the cab picked the friends up from a party in Bramford Lane in Ipswich to take them back to Kesgrave.

Mr Bush, 31, said: "I was in the front and my two friends were in the back.

"We were all having a laugh and a giggle and just as we got to Kesgrave my two friends had a little kiss – it was just a peck."

He said the driver asked the pair not to do that in his car so they apologised and said that it was only a little kiss.

But Mr Bush claimed the driver did not seem to want to leave it at that. He said: "He kept shouting and saying he did not care what we did, just not in his cab.

"He said if we were going to do that then we could get out, so we said we would."

Mr Bush said that he asked for a receipt from the driver who allegedly just shouted at him to get out.

But Mr Buck said his driver claimed that the men had been "slopping all over one another" and he had politely asked them to leave the vehicle.

Mr Buck said: "They told my driver that they would not stop as it was a free country.

"He said that if they were going to carry on then he did not want them in the cab. It just got out of hand – they were shouting at him and calling him names.

"He (the driver) just said that he was not putting up with it, he asked them to go but they were still shouting at him."

Mr Buck said his driver claimed they slammed the door so hard that the central locking was activated.

He also claimed that he did phone the passengers concerned in a bid to apologise about the incident but no-one had called him back.

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