Jed and Wyatt Lorenzen, twin gay brothers and waiters at the same establishment, sued their male bosses at Vermont Restaurant in Los Angeles.
After a 9-day sexual harassment trial, restaurant owners Manuel Mesta and Michael Gelzhiser were found guilty of creating a hostile work environment and the jury awarded each brother $1,000.
When you consider the millions often doled out in sexual harassment cases, this is really chump change. The brothers' lawyer, Sarah Hernandez, suggested a judicial prejudice.
"We won because my clients proved they were sexually
harassed despite Proposition 8 (which banned gay marriages) and the
fact that both are males," Hernandez said. "It's harder to prove sexual
harassment with men because, unlike women, they don't break down and
cry on the stand."
What exactly constituted their alleged harassment?
Jed said that Gelzhiser often asked him whether he or his brother had a hotter a**. On a separate occasion, he told Wyatt that he jerked off while looking at a picture of him and his brother taken at an office party.
The other brother, Wyatt claimed that at a restaurant Halloween Party, he arrived in a "naughty Girl Scout" costume and Mesta put his hand up his dress and said you look "like a schoolgirl who was deserving and asking to be raped."
In defense of Mesta and Gelzhiser, some say that the owners are just playful and flirtatious with everyone, and that the Lorenzen brothers knew that.
I don't care if Jed was wearing a tutu! Putting your hand up a young man's skirt is never cute — it's just creepy.
Do you think Jed and Wyatt would've been awarded thousands more if they were women?
– Wilbur
Photo Credit: Flickr
if the were women they would get a lot more and the got way less because 1 the were gay and two if the were women so
If they were women, they would have got way more, probably upwards of a hundred grand each! This type of blatantly homophobic, sexist discrimination is abhorrable!