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A former contestant on the Bravo reality show “Top Chef” was allegedly attacked by a group of young persons yelling anti-gay slurs.
Josie Smith-Malave, an openly gay woman who participated on the second season of Bravo’s cooking reality series “Top Chef,” was reportedly attacked by a group of people who disapproved of her homosexuality.
Smith-Malave’s lawyer said the woman was with friends in a Sea Cliff bar, called Partners, in New York, over Labor Day weekend when they were all asked to leave.
According to the Miami Herald’s website, the cook was with her sister and a friend. They were asked to leave the bar after Smith-Malave and her friend danced together.
“It was getting too gay,” Smith-Malave’s civil-rights lawyer Yetta Kurland said. “Someone said they were offended by two women dancing together.”
Kurland said about a dozen people followed the group out of the bar, spat on them, yelled anti-gay slurs and physically attacked them. They were mostly male teenagers, miamiherald.com reports.
Celebrity gossip site TMZ.com reports that Nassau Police stated the incident is still under investigation. They did not offer details.
Smith-Malave, who is in her early 30s, is a Miami native and the former sous-chef for Marlow and Sons restaurant in Brooklyn. She has played for the New York Sharks of the Independent Women's Football League.
She was also a contestant on “Top Chef” during its second season. She left on episode 5.
“This was a straight bar,” Kurland told the Miami Herald. “The expectation we all have in this day and age is that gay people can go into a straight bar and straight people can go into a gay bar and we can all co-exist.”
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