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.
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.
YOU are the only one suggesting there’s more to it, and you’re doing it so you can side with the bigots/attackers while indirectly calling the victims liars.
you’re not excusing the violence towards this couple, but you’re sure going out of your way to excuse all of the bigotry and hate which led to it, even going so far as to assert that they’re liars overblowing the situation so you can claim the bigots/assaulters are blameless, or, at least , that this bigotry and hate was somehow reasonable.
you can claim to be leftie or whatever, but your words here show how you really feel towards the LGBTQ+ community and about those who would discriminate against us.
Dude sometimes people exaggerate. No strike that. USUALLY people exaggerate. Especially to escape blame in their own story. They aren’t to blame for the violence. Period. Full stop. But that doesn’t mean that they weren’t to blame for drawing an employee out to ask them to stop what they were doing. I’m not even saying that they definitely are. I. Don’t. Know. I haven’t seen security footage or anything. But suggesting that they might have been a little more extra in their kissing than they suggested is not tantamount to hating LGBT people. My suggestion doesn’t even have a thing to do with them being gay. Believe it or not, there are times where people jump to the minority card to explain how others feel about them or act towards them when, sometimes, they have legitimate reasons to feel things about someone or act a certain way irrespective of their minority traits. Are we all antisemites for preferring Walz over Shapiro as VP or being against the Palaesrinian genocide? We were accused of it, so it must be true, right? Does suggesting that Jewish people might be wrong about me being an antisemitic also make me antisemitic? Because you’re suggesting I’m a homophobe for not taking this one guy’s belief that the entire restaurant was itching to beat gay people as gospel.
My suggestion doesn’t even have a thing to do with them being gay.
but they are, and you’re still doing all these mental gymnastics to rationalize the bigotry and hate that was unleashed towards them.
Dude sometimes people exaggerate.
apparently, only LGBTQ+ people when being attacked and not, perhaps, the Shake Shack employees who assaulted them.
your automatic victim-blaming and vehement defense of the bigotry, even making up stories to rationalize it, shows who and what you really are.
This is a fight you don’t need to take a side in. It very well could be the employees didn’t decide, as a group, to put a man in the hospital for being gay but the best case scenario is still a beating fueled by tribalism as they decided to all put a guy in the hospital for yelling at their friend.
Lol. Dude, I’m a full on socialist pro-choice pro-LGBT rights progressive.
Then act like it.
Act like it… by disregarding the fact that gay people are flawed just like the rest of us and sometimes exaggerate or play down details in their stories to come off better? Fine, sure. Gay people are magic. They can’t lie. Feel better?
It’s not OK. There is a point, though,
“It’s not okay. Except…”
It’s not okay to spread the idea that strangers store their own sexual secretions in jars. Except, in your case…
Imagine that I finished that sentence by giving spurious reasons as to why I think it’s okay to spread a made up idea like that. Would you say ‘fair enough’ in response? Is it fair that I make you an exception, without evidence?
Is it fair that you make this gay couple an exception, without evidence?
Your suppositions are gross.
Please put more words in my mouth. Blatantly misquote me and misconstrue my basic English to mean whatever you want it to mean. Strawman me, daddy!
That’s interesting. You get to claim that a gay person was lying about kissing their boyfriend, but when you feel that assumptions are being made about you, you flip out. Do you often find that you treat people in ways that you don’t accept for yourself to be treated?
You said: “There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one, but…”
To me, that reads as, “It’s not OK. Except…”
Maybe you should have phrased it differently, e.g.:
There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one.
I think that, maybe, the kissing described was more heavy and sexual in nature than they described. This does not mean they deserved to be attacked.
Actually, I’m going to edit my post, because me supposing they were kissing extra hard has no bearing on the violence done against them. I said the violence was wrong, so saying ‘but they might have been kissing offensively hard’ is stupid. It doesn’t matter. I said it didn’t matter, and then I said it like I did matter. I’m going to remove that part, because it’s stupid, and makes me look suspicious.
I ask again:
It’s not okay to spread the idea that strangers store their own sexual secretions in jars. Except, in your case…
Imagine that I finished that sentence by giving spurious reasons as to why I think it’s okay to spread a made up idea like that. Would you say ‘fair enough’ in response? Is it fair that I make you an exception, without evidence?
