Citing Religion, DJ Refuses Gig For 60 Year Old Gay Man’s Birthday Party

A Maryland DJ company is citing their deeply held religious beliefs as reason to refuse to play at a 60-year gay old man’s birthday party.

For years Christian conservatives have claimed they have the legal and moral right to refuse service to same-sex couples wishing to wed. Wedding cakes, wedding flowers, wedding music, even wedding gowns have all been claimed by the anti-gay religious right as their artistic creations and therefore exempt from accommodation laws. 

But what about birthday party music?

Does the Bible prohibit Christians from providing music for a gay man’s birthday party?

That’s essentially the claim the owners of Maryland’s Ultrasound Deejays are making.

Dani Tsakounis and her brother Tom have a gay roommate, and are throwing him a 60th birthday party.

Ultrasound refused because the “birthday boy” is gay.

“I just said, ‘We won’t be able to do it, we’re a Christian organization and it would go against our faith, I’m sorry,’” Michael Lampiris, co-owner of Ultrasound Deejays, told the Washington Post.

Tom, who is also gay and married to a man (not the roommate,) said Ultrasound’s policy “made me feel like I got hit in the stomach. You feel like: ‘C’mon, in my neighborhood?’ But: Wow, yes — in my neighborhood.”

Dani Tsakounis said the fact that the party is for a gay man came out through basic conversation when the DJ company tried to match one of their 40 DJs for the party.

“Once she told him it was a 60th,” the Post reports, “Lampiris joked that she sounded too young to have a peer who was 60 — was this her father? That led to her describing that the man having the birthday was a long-ago partner of her brother, who was now married to another man. The three now live in the same house.”

“I said: ‘Are they together in a union?’ And she said ‘Yes.’ It took me back and I said: ‘I don’t know if anyone would want to do it, I just don’t know,’” Lampiris recalled saying. Then he told Tsakounis his objection was religious. “She said ‘Forget it,’ and hung up.”

Ultrasound Deejays have a written policy on their website.

“Family-Friendly Entertainment with clean cut music,” they promise. “Let us work together to keep America clean and good!”

While also promising to “always try to provide a bright, entertaining, wholesome and fun deejay style where no one is left out, and everyone leaves with a smile,” they also note:

We will not play music that contains profanity or vulgarity.

We will not support a new teen dance style called “freaking.”

We will not tolerate provocative dancing or actions.

We will not participate with strippers or be involved in any event with strippers.

We will not be involved in any event with fortune tellers, psychics, or magicians.

We will not be involved in any event that celebrates Halloween.

We will not be involved in any event involving homosexual celebration or activity. We follow biblical morality.

We do not work on Sundays.

Apparently, some will be left out, and not everyone will get to smile.

 

Image by choo chin nian via Flickr and a CC license