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.
Man that’s an unfortunate last name.
Some christian dingus is who I’d expect to be the homophobe lol
Lol I was reading that bit and felt really bad for poor middle school Dingus.
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I remember having to get my dad out of a burger king because two dudes smooched one another. That bigot never once in his life accepted that other peoples lives were their own and none of his business.
Can I take a wild guess and also say that he’s more than likely one of those people that cry “the government needs to stay out of my business!!”
I know far too many of those people… It’s only bad if it’s aimed at them.
Not anymore.
It’s absolutely insane to me that people care so much what other people do. While my dad isn’t a bigot, nothing seems to be more interesting what other people do. He has to keep an eye on his neighbours all the time and tells me things like when their light is on at night. I keep telling him that i absolutely don’t care. He once asked me something about my neighbour and was shocked that i didn’t know. I didn’t tell him that i din’t even know his name, or anything really.
Tell me your dad is the HOA president without saying your dad is the HOA president.
Glutton for punishment if you’re homophobic and working at the Shake Shack in Dupont Circle.
Nothing good ever happens at Shake Shack.
You don’t like paying $15 for a tiny burger?
This is an action-packed comment section.
That has to be a fake name…
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Asking them to leave is one thing, but assaulting one of them is inexcusable no matter what they were doing.
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Then the way they were kissing is irrelevant.
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I guarantee nothing would have been said to begin with if it were a man kissing a woman the same way.
…dunno where you live, but if I started going with the tongue with my girl I would 100% get absolutely kicked out of any food place. It’s not a place for that high public display of affection.
Not saying tho they did that. Just pointing out you’re flat out wrong.
Well, not no matter. For all we know, one of them took the first swing, the video is very truncated.
I don’t feel confident siding with either side with such limited information.
My money is also on bigotry, but the way Dingus said “began to kiss” makes me wonder how intense it was. If he’d said “gave my partner a kiss” that’s one thing, but “began to kiss” sounds like it might have been more like “making out” which I don’t want to see anyone doing in a restaurant.
I’m just speculating and the real answer is probably homophobia, especially given the assault that ensued.
I’m sure the difference is that if it were a hetero couple people might have commented “Get a room!” or something and left it at that, and it wouldn’t have escalated.
I think fat people aren’t cool and gross to look at. So i expect that they respect my wish and keep away from me. I don’t care if female or male, because i’m not a bigot.
Doesn’t even compare to assault.
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Man I wish I could have seen this. Sounds funny as shit
There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one, but I would be very shocked if the PDA were as innocent as they imply it was for someone to walk out from behind the counter and calmly ask them to knock it off. There are always two sides to every altercation, and even his description, “kind of briefly - we began to kiss” sounds like downplaying the degree of the kissing going on. It sounds like there was a good chance that it was a pretty excessive makeout session. They really seem to want to make it a homophobia thing, and maybe it was… whether the employees’ line for excessive would have been the same for a straight couple as for this gay one, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be shocked if the request was at least arguably reasonable for a business that doesn’t need people sucking face at the counter. Or maybe I’m wrong and the entire restaurant staff in left-leaning Washington DC are just a bunch of homophobes. Idk.
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I read his words. It was his words that made me doubt. He and his partner were the victims here, for sure. But that doesn’t mean that they are being honest about the preamble to the altercation. But if not fully believing a person about every single detail of their story, if not taking every single assumption that they made as gospel makes me homophobe because they happen to be gay, sure. Whatever.
But that doesn’t mean that they are being honest about the preamble to the altercation.
YOU, again, are the only one implying this, without evidence. And you’re clearly doing it to excuse the bigotry and violence they faced.
I didn’t say I had evidence. I said I got a feeling from the way he phrased his story. I also said I might be wrong.
yet, oddly, you keep asserting - without evidence - that the victims are liars and the bigotry and violence they received was justified.
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THE VIOLENCE WAS NOT JUSTIFIED.
then why do you keep trying to justify it?
Dude, you are wrong. Give it up. No guy has ever had the shit beat out of him by a stores employees for straight PDA. This was homophobia, and your bullshit argument just invalidates the very real struggle gay people go through every day. You are clearly not gay. So learn when you don’t have the context to speak up, accept you are wrong, and sit the hell down.
SILENCE!
There are always two sides to every altercation
Yes, and in this case it was the side that violently beat a man for an event which started with their queerphobia and the other side that didn’t violently beat a man for any reason.
Even a full-on gay orgy in the dead center of the restaurant is no excuse for violence.
But beyond that, people who are bothered by PDA are so fucking lame. You really want a sterile, sexless world devoid of passion and expressions of love? I think that sounds so fucking miserable
You really want people fingering each other on a park bench next to the little league field? See, I can play the extreme straw man game too.
I don’t think we should encourage it, but frankly I also don’t think it’s the apocalyptic moral event others seem to either. Humanity fucked outside, in relative public for centuries and I’m pretty sure not every single child of that era was forever traumatized by it.
I agree with you but the place of business has every right to ask them to leave. If they don’t leave or start arguing back what else are they supposed to do to get them to leave? How is that different than a bouncer in a club?
Call the cops and have them trespassed. You shouldn’t put hands on someone unless there’s immediate danger.
It’s an awkward position to be in these days, wanting someone out of your establishment. I’d argue that calling the police on a homeless / queer / brown / black / trans person is recklessly gambling with their life. If you want them off your property but don’t want them killed, you’re not left with a lot of options. I don’t have a solution here, I just want to highlight that the degradation of public institutions in the US has gotten to the point that you really can’t just casually phone the cops unless you’re comfortable with the possibility of some blood on your hands.
Oh, so you want them killed?
To a degree they do. Businesses have the right to refuse service, but not if doing so appears to be targeting somebody for discriminatory reasons. Since the impetus here seems to be the kiss between two men, if they aren’t asking opposite-sex couples who engage in the same to leave then this actually is not a legal request. There’s some context here that is impossible to know, so frankly I’m not really keen to make a clear determination one way or the other personally, but I still wanted to point out that it’s not really automatically as simple as “the business asked them to leave.”
You think a lot about that gay kissing don’t you now.
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.
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.
I’m not. But whatever you say
“nuh-uh!” is rarely a successful debate tactic.
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.
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.
I’ve said multiple times that the violence was not okay and there was no excuse for it. No matter how much pda happened. I have also said multiple times that they are absolutely not to blame for the violence assuming neither threw the first punch. I only suggested that he might have downplayed a single detail in his retelling about what caused the employee to talk to them in the first place.
I’ve said multiple times that the violence was not okay and there was no excuse for it.
yet you’re bending over backwards to make excuses for it
You’re the kind of person that listens to a broken woman describe being the victim of domestic violence and ask “but what did you do to set him off?”
The only thing evident about you and your line of thinking is resentment.
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.
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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?
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.
You people are unhinged…
Inb4 what do I mean “you people?”
You just proved how mad I made you.
Delicious
Keep Lashing out, troll
Being a victim doesn’t make you automatically incapable of lying. I’m not siding with the violent assholes either
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.
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left-leaning Washington DC
lol. You should have opened with that line so I would have known to stop reading earlier.
DC voters are 56% Democrat/lean democrat vs 28% Republican. Source: PewResearch.org
American democrats are still pretty damn conservative.
Alright, but they are also generally pro-LGBT existence, right?
Even if they are, I don’t see the point of generalizing all of DC, or any city as liberal or progressive. Are you trying to say the suspect would have attacked the couple if they were straight?
I’m saying the chances of the staff of a restaurant with no reason to specifically seek right leaning bigots in a left leaning area has a higher than average chance of being mostly liberal people that do not violently hate gay people. There’s no guarantee of that, but the odds are pretty good.
I’m saying that the employee would have asked a straight couple to knock off the PDA if it was deemed excessive too, yes. There were very few details as to led the verbal disagreement turned argument into a physical fight, so I don’t know what happened there. My assumption, if an actual bigotred urge to beat up gays wasnt involved, is that a heated argument started, accusations were thrown and tempers got out of hand leading to someone throwing the first punch. After a punch was thrown, I assume the rest of the staff joined their coworker and things really quickly escalated.
Just to be clear about 2 things: 1) I am not justifying or excusing the escalation of a verbal disagreement to physical violence. I don’t care what the circumstances are, there is no excuse. 2) no matter the reasons for the fight or their reasons for joining, all of the other staff members joining into the fight/beating rather than breaking it up are assholes and should face legal consequences for their actions.
The only thing I am potentially justifying on the restaurant employee’s part is the part where they asked them to stop the PDA, and only IF my suspicion is correct and it was more than simple kissing going on. A restaurant manager/owner not only has a right to make their restaurant a comfortable place for all their clientele, but a responsibility to do so in behalf of their staff. If a few guests’ actions are likely to turn away other guests from eating there, then they are completely justified in asking them to stop. And, as I said, I am still not sure of that. It is still just a feeling. I could 100% be wrong, and then entire altercation from beginning to ending was homophobia from the entire restaurant staff through and through. I just don’t think that is terribly likely between the locale and the way the victim resold his story.
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It’s saddening to me that the take of “there’s probably more to the story here” is so objectionable. Judgment absolutely should be withheld pending investigation.
Making up stories just so someone can blame the victims is generally not well received here.
But it’s obviously not the making up stories part that’s bad, who the stories get made up about is far more important.
So, you know the bigotry is wrong, you just celebrate it anyway.
It saddening to me to see someone put in the hospital because they kissed their partner. It’s even more saddening that assholes like you want to invalidate that experience with your baseless doubt.
As someone who works retail, customers lie. There’s a million examples of customers who start fights with employees and then pretend to be the victim. Their sexuality doesn’t enter into it.
What’s more likely, a bunch of employees collectively decided to assault a gay customer for no reason? Or a customer was making a scene and then when asked to leave decided to assault an employee and the others had to help?
Seriously? People are attacked, killed, and imprisoned for being gay all over the world today. And how often are random people attacked by minimum wage employees for any other reason? Here’s a hint. Not very often.
You’re being ridiculous. “All over the world” is not relevant; this is Washington DC not Uganda so let’s not hastily generalize. Otherwise you can knee-jerk believe Jussie Smollett.
Let me ask you this; there’s HUNDREDS of videos online, YouTube and world star, about a brawl between a McDonalds employee and a customer. How many of them show the customer at fault, and how many show the employee starting the violence? I know the answer, but clearly you don’t. The answer may surprise you.
Oh, and you bringing Jussie Smollett into this tells me all I need to know. You are a closet homophobe who is looking for any excuse to demonize the gay community. You can fuck right off with that shit. Anyone can find a person that has done something horrible that represents a minority community. The actions of a single person do not mean shit in this context. There were plenty of witnesses that saw the assault.
Let me be very clear. I don’t give a fuck what these guys were doing in the restaurant that night, or how they responded. It is never acceptable for a group of random people to claim vigilante justice and just beat the shit out of two people that didn’t instigate physical violence.
Nice attempt at assumptions, I’m merely trying to tell you that you shouldn’t believe every accusation just because they come from a member of a minority that you love. As a member of another minority I’m obviously against hate crimes and violence, and my skepticism comes from years of cynicism from working in retail and watching angry people try to make up stories to get the manager to fire people because they don’t like being told no by cashiers.
If your mind is made up, then peace.
I bet you tell black people racism is over too, don’t you?
Edit: because I realize you may actually think homophobia is over in more civilized parts of the world, let me remind you of the stabbing in NYC last year that was determined to be a gay hate crime: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/nyregion/oshae-sibley-stabbing-charges.html
This is New York, not Uganda.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I would be very shocked if the PDA were as innocent as they imply
You’re probably right. They were most likely forcing unwilling patrons into the corner and shoving tongues down the innocent dinners throats. Why should the simple, expedient (and most likely) answer of INTOLERANT BIGOTS even be considered? Open your eyes, sheeple!
Woah. So many angry SJWs here. I kind of see your point, but you connecting the dots was, I think, obviously a bit gratuitous.
