Christian Dingus, 28, was with his partner when, he says, employees told the couple not to kiss inside, and the argument escalated outside.
A gay man accused a group of Washington, D.C., Shake Shack employees of beating him after he kissed his boyfriend inside the location while waiting for their order.
Christian Dingus, 28, was with his partner and a group of friends at a Dupont Circle location Saturday night when the incident occurred, he told NBC News. They had put in their order and were hanging around waiting for their food.
“And while we were back there — kind of briefly — we began to kiss,” Dingus said. “And at that point, a worker came out to us and said that, you know, you can’t be doing that here, can’t do that type of stuff here.”
The couple separated, Dingus said, but his partner got upset at the employee and insisted the men had done nothing wrong. Dingus’ partner was then allegedly escorted out of the restaurant, where a heated verbal argument occurred.
There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one, but I would be very shocked if the PDA were as innocent as they imply it was for someone to walk out from behind the counter and calmly ask them to knock it off. There are always two sides to every altercation, and even his description, “kind of briefly - we began to kiss” sounds like downplaying the degree of the kissing going on. It sounds like there was a good chance that it was a pretty excessive makeout session. They really seem to want to make it a homophobia thing, and maybe it was… whether the employees’ line for excessive would have been the same for a straight couple as for this gay one, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be shocked if the request was at least arguably reasonable for a business that doesn’t need people sucking face at the counter. Or maybe I’m wrong and the entire restaurant staff in left-leaning Washington DC are just a bunch of homophobes. Idk.
Even a full-on gay orgy in the dead center of the restaurant is no excuse for violence.
But beyond that, people who are bothered by PDA are so fucking lame. You really want a sterile, sexless world devoid of passion and expressions of love? I think that sounds so fucking miserable
I agree with you but the place of business has every right to ask them to leave. If they don’t leave or start arguing back what else are they supposed to do to get them to leave? How is that different than a bouncer in a club?
You think a lot about that gay kissing don’t you now.
Lol. Dude, I’m a full on socialist pro-choice pro-LGBT rights progressive. Feel free to check my post history. I couldnt give a fuck if two dudes are kissing. I’m not excusing the violence towards these guys. It’s not OK. There is a point, though, where macking on one another in public becomes a spectacle, gay, straight, pan or whatever. It is not homophobia for a business owner to ask you to cut it out if you are being excessive in front of other guests just because you are gay. I’ve seen straight couples make asses out of themselves in public too. It’s dumb. Asking that to stop in your restaurant is OK. What happened after is absolutely not. Is that clearer to you?
And then one of the men, pretty forcefully, like, pushed me out of the way on my shoulder,” Dingus said. “And then, you know, next thing I know, that kind of just, I think, sparked the rest of them. … They all just kind of started attacking me at that point, dragging me back through the floor and continuously punching me in my head.”
They essentially gang assaulted Mr. Dingus, and you believe it’s only because of some PDA? I highly doubt it, and believe fully that this is a case of homophobia. And almost certainly a hate crime too.
I assumed it happened because of the “heated verbal argument” he said his partner started. Words get exchange, tempers rise and fists come out. Again, I said I may be wrong. Maybe they were all homophobes that wanted to get a few licks in on some gay guys. Or maybe they were all assholes and turned a request into an argument into a fist fight. I don’t know. I just think his retelling of the story seems suggest there was more to it.
Multiple employees beat up a gay man after he had some PDA with his partner. No matter how you look at it the optics are horrible. Short of Mr. Dingus having a weapon or shouting slurs or something like that: there’s no justification for the employees to beat and attack him.
I feel like you’re jumping through several hoops to put the blame back on the person who was beaten by multiple people.
I’ve said multiple times that the violence was not okay and there was no excuse for it. No matter how much pda happened. I have also said multiple times that they are absolutely not to blame for the violence assuming neither threw the first punch. I only suggested that he might have downplayed a single detail in his retelling about what caused the employee to talk to them in the first place.
I’ve said multiple times that the violence was not okay and there was no excuse for it.
yet you’re bending over backwards to make excuses for it
