Restaurant fined for throwing out kissing lesbians - Sweden

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish lesbian couple who were thrown out of a Stockholm restaurant in 2003 for kissing won an appeal on Monday against an earlier court ruling that cleared the restaurant owner of sexual discrimination.

The Court of Appeals in Stockholm ordered restaurant owner Aziz Cakir to pay 50,000 crowns (3,700 pounds) in damages and to cover the legal costs of Sweden's ombudsman against sexual discrimination, HomO, which filed the appeal.

Cakir asked Anna Fernstrom and Susanne Gustafsson to leave his restaurant after they kissed and later told police he did not let anyone engage in such behaviour on his premises regardless of their sexual orientation.

Stockholm District Court cleared him of discrimination, a charge that can result in a year in jail, in the country's first test of legislation against sexual discrimination in the provision of goods and services.

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