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.
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.
I don’t care if they were fucking the burgers and shakes, the employees can ask them to leave if they’re violating the business’ code of conduct, and after that they can call the police if they’re trespassing.
The customer can sue the shit out of them after the fact if it was discriminatory, and in D.C. that would be a slam dunk if they were just kissing.
Once the employees decided to resort to violence, they fucked up, regardless of what the customers were doing.
Either way, you weren’t there, and homophobes blow up about pretty mundane things all the time, so maybe just take the gay men at their word instead of accusing them of inappropriate behavior and revealing yourself to be a homophobe yourself.
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.
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.
“From the way you phrase your posts, I guess you might have disturbing images on your hard drive. I might be wrong.”
Would you take offence if I said that? If yes, then think about what you’re doing.
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You also say that this does not warrant violence. So why even make that point?
If one of my female friends is sexually harassed, and I say, “There’s no excuse for that. It doesn’t matter how you were dressed. However, I bet you were dressed provocatively,” am I being a despicable piece of shit?
I accept I’m ‘weird’, because I’m heavily autistic. But at least I don’t come across like someone who says “Of course you’re not at fault, BUT…”
Edit: checking your post history, you’ve never said anything interesting. Okay, bye.
If you female friend wore a shirt so low cut and loose that she was flashing her tits to everyone and was asked to leave the restaurant because of it, so she started arguing and then the employee attacked her… no, her clothing did not excuse the attack. It does excuse her being asked to leave. It is pretty simple how both of those things can be true. It is pretty simple that the fact that she was attacked doesn’t make the employee asking her to leave unjustified. And if she recounted the story and said “he had a problem with my shirt that might have been a little low cut”, and failed to mention she was fully flashing people, she would be lying about the facts even if those facts, again, don’t justify the violence that followed. I don’t know why this is so complicated. Reality has nuance.
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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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then why do you keep trying to justify it?
KryptonianCodeMonkey’s top post:
They modify a ‘never’ with a comma and a ‘but’. So, not ‘never’, clearly.
It’s odd that they’re working so hard to pretend they’re not saying what they’re actually, visibly, verifiably saying.
Thanks to everyone who questioned this so capably.
You modify a ‘never’ with a comma and a ‘but’. So, not ‘never’.
“They kissed in a non-innocent way and I had to assault them.”
Hmm, that sounds like bullshit to me.
First of all, the word “but” doesn’t negate the statement in the first half of the sentence. “I wanted ice cream, but I ate a donut instead” doesn’t mean I never wanted ice cream. The but, in this case was meant to indicate that, while I am on their side in regard to the violence that occurred becuase it was unjustifiable regardless of what started the interaction, I would not be surprised to find put that he downplayed that detail and the employee may have been justified in asking them to stop. Him downplaying that detail, and/or the employee being justified in asking them to stop does not, in an way shape for form, excuse, defend, or approve the violence that followed. That was the exact reason I prefaced that statement with the fact that the physical violence wasn’t acceptable here.
It’s ‘unjustifiable’. So why link that to assuming the victim was obfuscating the truth? In the same sentence, you are absolving the victim of blame while also claiming that they lied.
Because I was prefacing my statement in an attempt to ward off misunderstandings about whose side I was on. I underestimated the degree to which people lack a sense of nuance apparently, though
What ‘nuance’ is there about speculating that two assaulted gay people were kissing harder than they described?
As you yourself say, it does not have any bearing on the violence done to them being acceptable. So why link those two things together with a comma but?
That it’s possible it’s less to do with them being gay and more to do with them potentially making out heavily and making the workers uncomfortable, which is possible if they were a straight couple too instead.
Not condoning the violence in the slightest
this assumes the couple was lying in their account, for which there is no evidence. this is little more than victim-blaming, and using a falsehood to justify bigotry and violence.
I don’t know what happened, I just understand what the person’s point was in bringing it up and can also understand that they’re not condoning or justifying the violence that occurred at all.
You get attacked on your commute.
I say: “It’s terrible you were dragged out of your car and hit, that’s not acceptable!”
I then add: “You probably were driving badly, though, which pissed people off.”
The second sentence modified the first, yes?
Yeah it does of course, however wanting to know the facts of the situation isn’t the same as making an excuse for the behavior exhibited.
You’re right, just ignore them.
People like big buts.
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.
I’ve certainly not heard of a hetero couple being assaulted for kissing. Unless they were seen to be of different ethnic heritages or religions.
How I’ve seen people deal with seeing kissing they don’t want to see: “Stop that and leave.”
How I’ve seen people deal with their bigotry being triggered: escalating violence.
SILENCE!
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 should have stopped after the first sentence.
I don’t fucking care if they were in spit-swapping makeout mode, they did nothing wrong.
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?
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.
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There’s no point lying, your posts are visible. You said:
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.
Usually better to show that than say it.
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.
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.
Thank you for your experience and perspective.
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.
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.
yet you’re bending over backwards to make excuses for it
I really havent. Suggesting that the restaurant may have been justified I asking them to stop what they were doing is not excusing the violence even a little and it’s ridiculous for you to conflate the two things
Good.
You just can’t stop adding to absolute ‘never’ and ‘not’ with additional bullshit.
Let’s go back to your first post, which started:
You said the victims weren’t ‘as innocent’. You’re victim blaming. You can’t cover that up by starting with ‘not okay’, ‘no excuse’, and ‘not to blame’. You consistently follow on with words that EXPLICITLY MEAN “BUT they are not innocent and have some blame”.
You talk like a politician. I can imagine you being on TV saying: “I respect childless women, however, they should vote like their father says”.
Stop equivocating. If the violence was wrong, it was wrong. That’s 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.
but they are, and you’re still doing all these mental gymnastics to rationalize the bigotry and hate that was unleashed towards them.
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.
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.
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
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.
Then act like it.
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.
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
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.
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.
“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.
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!
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.:
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?
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.
If the truth tends be in the middle, then all very right-wing people have to say is “kill all foreigners, make child marriage legal, and give men complete control over their wives, daughters, and female employees.” And someone who judges that, yes, we must look at the middle, will choose the halfway point in-between all or nothing. That will mean:
A very King Solomon approach. Cut everything in half, and see which half (or whole) dies.
We are talking about this case. I very specifically did not say that generally the truth tends to be in the middle. Do not put words in my mouth.
Ah, so when it comes to gay people being beaten up, they’re always partially at fault?
“Ah, so <puts other words in their mouth>”
The shameless dishonesty of some people, lol. Pathetic.
Is this wilful ignorance?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_violence_against_LGBT_people
In Oklahoma, I’m sure it happens multiple times a day. In DC, probably not quite as often.
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.
Lemmy must have finally arrived, we’re now attracting the kind of chuds that use SJW as an insult.
The way these people harass other users is ridiculous, but I’m not trying to prove anything. I wish there are consequences for the actions of everyone involved in this sad situation, and I hope some clarification becomes public. This is my last comment here, since consulting other sources, that seems to be the case.
EDIT: I don’t know what a chud is. Won’t be investigating this word, doesn’t seem practical to me.
what he means is he hopes for consequences for the gay men who had the audacity to kiss in public.
Good. Us “SJWs” won’t miss you at all.
“Imagine being upset at gay people being assaulted by fast food employees.”