One of the two Staten Island men charged with assault as a hate crime for beating a gay man in the bathroom of the Stonewall Inn spoke to the Daily News to insist that he's no homophobe. Matthew Francis claims he had no idea he was in the bar that is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. Plus, "My sister's a full-blown lesbian... I don't discriminate against gay people."
Francis and his friend Christopher Orlando, 17, who also faces assault as a hate crime charge, were also charged with attempted robbery in the early Sunday scuffle that left D.C. resident Ben Carver banged up. However, in his jailhouse interview from the Manhattan House of Detention, the 21-year-old Francis said he was just breaking up a fight, "I'm not going to say sorry, because I don't know what I should be sorry for. I don't hate gay people. I don't hate anybody," and added, "If it had happened somewhere else I wouldn't be here."
Orlando's father also spoke to the Daily News, "We are a working class family. We don't hate anyone here.... I'm not going to sugarcoat what happened. It was a bar fight, but I swear on my life it's not about Gays or race or any of that. We don't care about any of that stuff in this family." Don Orlando also said he wanted to apologize to Carver in person.
Carver seems skeptical of Francis's claims, "[Francis] was the one who was hitting me, and then the other young man was the one who pinned me." (Also, in Carver's account, before being attacked, one of the two told him, "Don’t pee next to me, Faggot," and the other demanded $20 from him.)
