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.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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?

      • finley@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          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.

          • finley@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            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.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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            2 months ago

            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.

            • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              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

              • finley@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                You claim not to try to take a side, but you have Repeatedly accused the victims of lying, without any evidence, and have used that as justification for what happened to them.

                The people here aren’t idiots, and we can see what you’re doing.

      • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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!

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 months ago

            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?

      • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Lol. Dude, I’m a full on socialist pro-choice pro-LGBT rights progressive.

        Then act like it.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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?

          • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Don’t blame everyone else for your own poor behavior. calling the victims out as liars just so you can side with the bigots is pretty dispicable.

              • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                yet, you’ll call these victims liars - over and over - to rationalize the bigotry and violence they received. and you keep doing it, like everyone can’t see what you’re doing.

              • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                2 months ago

                Being a victim doesn’t make you automatically incapable of lying.

                Maybe two gay men kissing can be seen as extreme sexual content through the eyes of bigots, because – hear me out…

                BIGOTRY IS NOT LOGICAL
                AND NEVER HAS BEEN

                • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  You could be right. Every step of the way I have suggested that my read on the guys words might be wrong, that they could all be bigots that were just waiting to be able to beat on some gays. I don’t know man. I even came to this article taking it at face value that an entire restaurant staff was a bunch of homophobes. It was reading the guys own account that made thar conclusion seem sketchier to me. That is why I brought it up. That doesn’t mean I’m right. And that doesn’t mean the violence was OK. It unequivocally was not. You all threw a fit because I questioned if a gay person may have slightly downplayed his PDA. But whatever, I’m tired of defending in this stupid backnand forth. Think what you want of me. Christ.

                  • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    Every step of the way, you have accused the victims of lying (without evidence) and justifying the attack on them.

                    Here you are doing it again.

              • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                Nobody is saying that they are incapable of lying. They’re saying you’re an asshole for accusing them of lying when you personally don’t know jack shit about what actually transpired.

                The fact that you feel obligated to cast these gay men (victims of assault for that matter) in a bad light makes it pretty clear what your bias is here.