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.
Trying to understand codemonkey, I believe they agrees there’s no justification. What they mean is that once a verbal fight started, tempers could have flared, and violence was inevitable, but not acceptable.
That said, I agree the optics are very bad, and more importantly, society should start from the default position of first assessing if a hate crime happened.
First thing should be “were these folks targeted based on their orientation?”
After that is thoroughly vetted, only then can it be considered “did a bunch of folks get heated in a shake shack after the customers were firmly but non discriminatorily told to knock it off?”
Edit if a reader thinks I took a side other than “hate crime bad, determine hate crime FIRST” with this comment you really need to think again.
First thing should be “were these folks targeted based on their orientation?”
Problem is, you can never make that determination, bigots will hide their bigotry (at least in a place where bigotry is not socially acceptable, which I think DC qualifies… Oklahoma for example would be different) so unless you have some other indication, or prior knowledge of the person involved, the outward appearance of (asking couple to tone it down because omg gay people) and (asking couple to tone it down because heavy PDA makes some people uncomfortable regardless of the sexes involved) is the same.
Asking anyone, of any orientation or partner, to tone down PDA in a private business property is not a hate crime.
Like, unless you say it specifically, you are addressing the PDA.
BAD: “quit being gay in here”
GOOD: “take the PDA outside, that’s not appropriate in here”
The law would care about every detail of the interaction, starting from the initial comments.
Scenario 1:
- human is told to quit the PDA
- they get in a verbal argument
- the human being loses the fight
- bonus, the employees wail on them extra.
Not a hate crime. (But crimes certainly happened)
Scenario 2:
- gay couple is told to quit “the gay stuff” (hypothetical hate speech)
- they get in a verbal argument
- the gay couple loses the fight
- bonus, the employees wail on them extra.
This seems like much more of a clear cut hate crime.
I mean like, a few human beings having a disagreement about humans stuff, which results in violence, is just normal crime.
The distinction is rooted in the origin of the dispute, and things said and intentions asking the way. It really matters to the courts.
To be clear though, I’m not trying to water down potential hate crimes. I stick to my original position that any crimes involving protected groups, must be cleared of known hate crime motivations first. But you can absolutely get in a fight with a gay person without any “hate crime” motivations.
