Texas Wedding Venue Offers to Pray for Gay Couple They Turned Away

Despite same-sex marriage having been legal across the United States for several years now, queer couples still struggle when it comes to finding venues and wedding service providers that will work with them.

When Aaron Lucero and Jeff Cannon started contacting venues on TheKnot.com for their wedding this November, they ran face first into discrimination.

The Venue at Waterstone, a wedding locale in north Texas, turned the couple away due to religious beliefs. But their response was more than a little intense.

“Our Venue came about as a vision given to me roughly 27 years ago. That vision was from God,” the owner, Lyle Wise, said in an email to Cannon. “The design for marriage that we hold to is based upon the design He set forth which is a representation of the bride of Christ joined to the Groom.

“Given His plan and design for marriage, we dare not veer from His instruction lest we be guilty of altering what He has set forth.”

The email continues on, warning the couple not to mistake their discrimination for “being unloving towards others,” and offering to share “the love God has shown” him, ending with a hope — sorry, a prayer — that “God works deeper in all our lives.”

Cannon wrote back a heartfelt and quite polite response explaining his history with religion and the discrimination he’s faced within it for being gay.

Lucero shared both emails on social media.

While the couple kept their cool with Wise via email, they admit that they were a bit shocked at his response.

“Before that, we never even though that we needed to tell people that we were, you know, doing a same-sex wedding. We thought a wedding is a wedding,” Cannon said.

Not in Texas, which is one of the states where it’s still legal for businesses to discriminate against and refuse service to people based on sexual orientation.

After Lucero and Cannon shared their story on social media and informed TheKnot.com of the interaction, The Venue at Waterstone was removed from the popular wedding planning site’s list of vendors.

And the men made a point to reach out to additional vendors they had appointments scheduled with to make sure everyone knew they were a same-sex couple. Two out of the three remaining were also canceled.