Wedding venue refused gay Texas couple because they don’t fit God’s ‘plan for marriage’
Aaron Lucero and Jeff Cannon wanted a country wedding. They say they still do, even after what they thought was their dream venue turned them away.
“It’s still the idea,” Lucero, 29, told McClatchy. “Planning your wedding is supposed to be this joyous, happy moment in your lives, and this was so jarring because it happened literally the first week we started looking for venues in earnest.”
But the Venue at Waterstone, in Celina, Texas, refused to host Lucero and Cannon, according to an email sent to the couple the night before they were to tour the rustic event space about 40 miles north of Dallas. In the email, the venue’s owner Lyle Wise explains that he’s only turning the couple away based on their sexual orientation because of his “love and gratitude” to God.
“Our love and gratitude to Him might be mistaken as being unloving toward others,” the email read, in part. “Although we do not host LGBTQ weddings or receptions, we are more than happy to converse and further explain our beliefs and the love God has shown us as well as how. He is conforming our lives to Himself.”
The couple was shocked to receive the email on the night of Jan. 19, just hours before they were to tour the facility.
“Before that, we never even thought that we needed to tell people that we were, you know, doing a same-sex wedding,” Cannon said, according to KXAS. “We thought that a wedding is a wedding.”
But in Texas, it’s completely legal for private businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples based on the religious beliefs of the business owner. Despite 2015’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down the ban on same-sex marriage, that’s the way state law reads in 30 of the 50 U.S. states, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
“It’s 2019,” Lucero told McClatchy. “I was stunned to find out that was still the case in so many states.”
Lyle Wise, the owner of The Venue at Waterstone, provided the following statement to KXAS: ”We are a family of believers. We love all people because Christ first loved us; Jeffrey and Aaron included. We cannot violate the convictions God has placed within us. In love, we would never affirm anyone in something that was to their detriment.”
The Knot, the wedding-planning site where the couple found the venue, has removed the Venue at Waterstone from its platform in response to what its ownership calls discrimination.
“Our company supports everyone’s right to marry the person they love and prohibits any vendor on our site from discriminating against a couple based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.,” a spokesperson from XO Group, which owns The Knot, wrote in a statement obtained by Out Magazine.
But Lucero thinks The Knot can do much more. He says that venues on the site are not held to that standard, and that he canceled appointments with two other wedding venues in the area when the Waterstone email prompted the couple to make sure their same-sex wedding was in bounds at other potential spots.
“The demand is for transparency,” Lucero said. “Couples shouldn’t be forced to out themselves to the venues in the hope that their sexuality is acceptable by each and every vendor. Their policies should be made known either on their own websites, or on their profile on The Knot.”
When they find their perfect venue, the couple hopes to get married on Nov. 17, Lucero said.
This story was originally published January 28, 2019 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Wedding venue refused gay Texas couple because they don’t fit God’s ‘plan for marriage’."
