‘We Are Not Serving the LGBTQ Community!’: Engaged Couple Says Videographer’s Rejection Was ‘Punch in the Gut’

Owner wrongly claims there’s not “a lot of good evidence out there that two men or two women can come together and have a really amazing effective family.”

A top-rated Denver videographer’s response to a same-sex couple’s inquiry is earning outrage locally.

“Unfortunately, at this time, we are not serving the LGBTQ community!” Media Mansion said in an email to Anna Suhyda, The Denver Channel reports.

“With an exclamation point,” Suhyda told the ABC affiliate. “Kind of like a punch in the gut.”

Suhyda says the man she spoke to at Media Mansion asked her, “What’s your fiancée’s name?”

“And I said, ‘Amanda.’ And I could tell he kind of paused on the phone, but I thought he was maybe jotting down notes,” said Suhyda. “Then I l got to work and looked at my email.”

Media Mansion’s website says, “YOU ONLY GET MARRIED ONCE. So, capture it RIGHT,” which is what Anna and her fiancée, Amanda Broadway, were trying to do.

On Instagram, responding to growing criticism, Media Mansion says they are “happy” to work with the LGBTQ community to create a film for a “growing business,” or perhaps a “vlog,”, but they “simply do not film gay ceremonies or events.”

They did not even use the word “wedding.”

“This decision is based on personal religious beliefs,” they say, adding that the email that they sent “did not communicate correctly our stance on the LGBTQ community.”

The owner of the video business, Benjamin Hostetter, talked with The Denver Channel. The TV station says he specifically identified himself as Christian, and “said he is not judging anyone, but he is writing a book about ‘family, covenant, sex and marriage’ and has strong beliefs about the covenant of marriage.

“It really like just kind of exploded, and everyone just kind of assumed that we hate gay people, which is sad,” Hostetter says. “I have friends who are gay, and if they want to hang out and me to do a video for them, it’s totally cool. But specifically doing a project that would be against my beliefs in anything regardless of what the specifics of it is not something I want to engage in.”

“I believe it has to do with family and producing healthy families,” Hostetter says. “I don’t think there’s a lot of good evidence out there that two men or two women can come together and have a really amazing effective family that is good and is everlasting.”

Hostetter’s claims are factually incorrect.

Studies have repeatedly shown that children raised by same-sex parents do as well as or even better than children raised by different-sex parents.

Here’s The Denver Channel’s report: