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.
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.
I wasn’t trying to take a side. I think the guy may have been underselling the amount of PDA he and his partner were doing and the they may have been justifiably asked to tone it down, but I’m still on their side. They didn’t deserve to be victims, to be attacked. Both of those things can be true at the same time. Reality is not always as clean as bad guys were all wrong and good guys were all right. They are still the good guys here even if they are embarrassed to say that they got carried away with themselves. That’s not a crime. I’ve been gross with a girl in public too. M
