The backstory:
Siena Cucina Italiana, a restaurant attached to the Balboa Inn in Newport Beach, CA, was in the news recently, and not for a good reason.
Two videos emerged of a big middle-aged guy physically throwing out two young, flamboyant gay patrons, who along with another friend, were told to leave the establishment and had been arguing about it.
Angel Bonilla, Colton Moyer and Clement Serafin went into the restaurant at 8pm on Apri 13, and sat at the bar, but were quickly told by the middle-aged female bartender that they needed to show ID. Apparently they produced ID, but one of the IDs was judged to be "fake", and the three were told to leave. Instead, they stayed and argued about it (it is not clear how long), claiming that the IDs were real, and that they suspected this ID thing was a ruse to avoid serving them due to their sexual preference.
The bartender then allegedly told them to "get out', supposedly used an anti-gay slur, and then summoned a "security guard" to forcibly remove them while they were still arguing. (This part was not caught on camera, so it is not possible to corroborate.)
However, a video does show a big guy in a white shirt (though not in any kind of uniform) showing up, grabbing Colon Moyer out of his chair, and physically tossing him out the door. Angel Bonilla was repeatedly saying to the guy, "Are you kidding me?", to which the big guy replied, "You're next", and indeed grabbed Angel, and tossed him out the door even harder.
Here are the two videos:
A lawsuit was just filed over this.
You can read a little more about it in this LA Times story: http://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-p...426-story.html
The two questions at hand:
1) Was the "fake ID" claim really a ruse to avoid serving gay customers, or was the restaurant simply acting within its rights to refuse service to people it suspected (even incorrectly) were holding fake IDs?
2) If the patrons argued instead of leaving when told, did the restaurant have a right to physically eject them by force?
Interestingly, there is a police investigation over this, and police still don't know who the big guy in the white shirt was, and they're asking for the public's help (lol).
Knowing that cell phone video depicting only part of an incident can be highly misleading, I chose not to rush to judgment, and looked into it a bit myself.
I will post my findings/opinion in the next message.