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.
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.”