2 NYC Men Sue McDonald's Over Anti-Gay Employee

Two men from New York City are suing a McDonald's in uptown Manhattan because an employee allegedly thought they were gay and launched anti-gay attack against them with other customers, the New York Post reports.

Willis Washington Jr. and Horace Stevenson III claim they were at a McDonald's in Hamilton Heights around 2:30 a.m. last December when a customer assumed they were gay. According to their lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the customer "started to say he had a problem with gay people and that the gay lifestyle was not what God wants." They ignored the customer but when they went to place their order with the cashier, the employee allegedly added to the anti-gay tirade and refused to serve them, the lawsuit says.

The customers then pushed the two men to the back of the fast food joint, resulting Stevenson to call 911 before the cashier "actually handed one of the customers a metal pipe from behind the counter and motioned to him that he should hit plaintiffs with it," the lawsuit reads.

The men say they managed to run away but quickly returned to the McDonald's when they saw police arrived. But things went from bad to worse when Washington and Stevenson were placed under arrest after they were falsely blamed for the violent incident, they say.

The charges against the men were later dismissed, however, but the duo was "severely humiliated, mentally anguished and emotionally and physically distressed," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit does not specify how much the men are seeking in damages against the Colley Group, the company that owns the McDonald's franchise where the incident happened.