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.

      • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 months ago

        I’m not.

        There’s no point lying, your posts are visible. You said:

        There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one, but…

        You were talking in bad faith from the very first sentence. An absolute ‘never’ to modifying it into a conditional, based on you imagining that two gay people justified a Big Mad Moment because they kissed too hard.

        There is never a reason to beat up a couple as they wait for their fast food, no matter how hard they kiss. There is no but. That was a complete sentence. Them being gay doesn’t change that in the slightest.

         

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

        Usually better to show that than say it.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Read my other reply to you regarding the misinterpretation of the word “but”. As for justifying the “big mad moment”, I said that calmly asking them to stop the PDA may have been justified. The employee did not get angry at them when asking them to stop by the own retelling of the victim here. I did not say that the anger and violence that followed were justified. I literally said the opposite. And you can think whatever of my progressivism. Living in a reality where sometimes people downplay their actions to come off better in a store is apparently antithetical to progressivism to you, but not to me. The guy still has rights, dignity and the freedom to express himself and love whomever he wants even if he was too embarrassed to admit he was sucking face a bit too intensely for a business to be happy with.

      • sneaky@r.nf
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        4 months ago

        Welcome to Lemmy. I get where you’re coming from. I run a business and I have had to ask straight and gay couples to tone down their PDA. Sometimes they respond poorly and I have had them downplay what they were doing as if I wasn’t just watching it… Unfortunately letting that kind of thing slide negatively impacts how other customer view my business. I can’t have people groping each other when a family walks in.

        To the point of the people not comprehending the full scope of what you’re saying, obviously this situation got violent and that’s uncalled for. Straight or gay violence isn’t the answer.