BTL's Expo to Showcase Metro Detroit Equality Vendors – and Cake!

We are so excited to host the 9th Annual LGBTQ Wedding, Home and Life Expo this Sunday at The Henry, Dearborn's gorgeous hotel and event venue. It will be glamorous, delicious, fun energetic and entertaining!
It is also important for each of us to meet these vendors who respect us in the LGBTQ community as customers and as full members of our collective society.
As we write this, Aimee Stephens' case is about to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was fired from a local funeral home after many years of service because she transitioned from male to female, her former employers saying that the funeral home's customers would be unable to deal with a transgender person. The court will decide if trans people are protected under the laws that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, but we as the collective LGBTQ community can decide that we don't want to put up with anyone who would discriminate against one of our own. There are other funeral professionals such as Michigan Memorial who welcome us and deserve our business.
Cities, towns and states across the country are trying to enact legislation that allows people to protect their "religious freedoms" by allowing discrimination against and persecution of LGBTQ people, women, immigrants and other less empowered people. Of course we must fight these initiatives in the courts and at the ballot box, but we can stand up for ourselves with our pocketbooks now by supporting the equality-minded vendors who already stand with us against the tide of anti-LGBTQ–ism.
The Expo this Sunday will showcase over 80 vendors who are proactively coming out to meet with LGBTQ people and couples that need wedding services, home improvement, adoption support and a myriad of other things. We as a community have the opportunity this Sunday to meet face-to-face with dozens of businesses that support us and will not discriminate against us – even if they are granted the legal right to do so.
The day kicks off at 11 a.m. with a pre-Expo, complimentary continental breakfast provided by the catering department of The Henry – delicious! Eric Swanson of Broadway Brunch at Pronto will serenade you as you nosh on the delectables! The Expo doors open at noon in the main Presidential Ballroom. It will be fun, joyous, musical – and there will be a lot of cake! (see page 19 for more details)
So, we invite you to join us Sunday for a celebration and a huge thank you to businesses that support us. Perhaps now more than ever, it is important for our community to recognize and patronize those who value us. It will send a strong message to those who do not!