Eliza Lieberman and her partner Brooke Rhodes proposed to each other the morning of July 19, at the same time, under the cloudy skies of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The pair met two years earlier via TikTok and arranged to hang out in person when they discovered they both lived in Charlotte. Right away, it just clicked.
“We cannot imagine not being together,” Lieberman said. Since then, they’ve routinely posted content on TikTok under the handle @elizaandbrooke chronicling date nights, living together and their recent engagement. A video from July 29 went viral, with more than 450,000 views on TikTok in less than a week after a Huntersville wedding venue declined to rent to the couple for being gay. TikTok users flooded the video’s comments with both support and vitriol. And negative comments have flooded the business’ Google reviews. But the venue’s denial is allowed in North Carolina.
“As a Christian faith-based business, our venue operates according to our sincerely held biblical beliefs regarding marriage,” a spokesperson from The Secret Garden and Estate said in an email obtained by the Observer. “Because of those beliefs, we are only able to host wedding ceremonies and celebrations that align with our understanding of marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman.”
The Secret Garden and Estate did not respond to requests for additional comment in time for publication. Google reviews online show similar experiences with the venue declining to serve LGBTQ+ customers. The day of the tour, Lieberman emailed the venue to double-check that it was inclusive to LGBTQ+ people, even though she didn’t see anything on its website that indicated otherwise, she said in her viral video.
“It felt like a slap in the face,” Lieberman said in the TikTok, “especially with all the niceties that surrounded such a hateful message.”
Lieberman did not expect to be denied from a venue for being a same-sex couple in this day and age, she said.
A lack of nondiscrimination protections
Unlike some other states, North Carolina does not have laws that prohibit businesses from turning away customers on the basis of sexual orientation, Dan Siegel, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina wrote in a statement to the Observer.
This means the responsibility falls to the individual towns. The city of Charlotte adopted its own nondiscrimination ordinance in 2021 that could apply in situations like the couple experienced, The Secret Garden and Estate is within the town of Huntersville’s jurisdiction. The town of Huntersville discussed a nondiscrimination ordinance that could regulate the actions of private businesses like The Secret Garden and Estate last year, but now that measure is “all but dead,” the assembly reported in August 2025.
A private wedding venue denying service to same-sex customers also is not protected at the federal level. The Constitution protects against discrimination by the government based on sex and sexual orientation. Federal law protects against sexual orientation-based discrimination when private businesses make employment decisions. “I think we both carry a little bit of fear living in the South and being perceived out in public as a queer couple,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think either of us face obvious discrimination often, so it can be hard when we do face such clear discrimination.”
This article appears courtesy of our media partner The Charlotte Observer.
This story is brought to you by Rosedale Health and Wellness and Dudley’s Place.
