A couple in Arizona was ready for their wedding. They
planned on tying the knot in December at Encanto Park. "We had the white
chairs, we had the beautiful red runner for us to walk down with my
dad,” Kenyata White said.
However, White and her fiancée, Crystal Allen, hit a
roadblock when the company they’d hired to help organize their wedding
told the couple they would no longer offer their services.
"We are very uncomfortable with same-sex marriage as it is
directly against our beliefs," Reverend Susan Latimer told White in an
email. "We would not be a very good fit."
"It was just crazy that she (Rev. Latimer) just completely turned," White said told KTAR. "I really felt like our conversations and our interaction was really genuine, and she really did like me at first.”
Phoenix has anti-discrimination laws, but because AffordableWeddingMinister.com is run by a Lamister and her husband, who is also a reverend, they are exempt from the law.
"If they're licensed ministers, they get to say who they
want to marry and who they don’t," said attorney Brendan Mahoney, who
co-wrote the Phoenix's LGBT anti-discrimination law.
"It's disappointing because it was the way I wanted it set up," White said. "Everything was just perfect."
"We're not saying they have to love us," Allen said. "They don't even have to condone what we do or who we are."
White added: ”They don't even have to have fun. Just set up our wedding."
The rejection comes a week after same-sex marriage was
legalized in the state of Arizona, after the Supreme Court decided the
ban on marriage equality was unconstitutional.
Mahoney had some advice for the couple: "Go find a place
that wants to marry you, that looks forward to marrying you, and have a
happy wedding."
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