Gay singer dropped from Christian music festival

Earlier this year we reported that Trey Pearson had come out.

The Everyday Sunday frontman wrote in a moving letter to fans that he felt: “a weight I have been carrying my whole life has been lifted, and I have never felt such freedom.”

Pearson, 35, has performed numerous times at the Joshua Fest Christian music festival in Northern California, but that was before he came out.

When Pearson was booked for the festival again for Labour Day weekend, he took to Twitter to celebrate. He tweeted, “Overwhelmed and honoured! I will be the first openly gay artist to ever play a major Christian music festival!”

Overwhelmed & honored!! I will be the FIRST OPENLY GAY ARTIST TO EVER PLAY A MAJOR CHRISTIAN MUSIC FESTIVAL! Share: https://t.co/LBe48uRkKG

— Trey Pearson (@treypearson) August 8, 2016

The celebrations came to an end rather quickly when organisers of the Labour Day weekend event felt forced to drop Pearson from the event because 11 of 14 members of the festival’s production team threatened to walk out if Pearson performed.

Speaking to Billboard Pearson said, “The owners are awesome and their hearts are awesome and that’s why they were inviting me in the first place.”

“There was no way they would have been able to have the festival. If they keep me, I’m not going to perform anyway, because the festival is not even going to happen, and the festival owners are going to lose probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Not quite sure how to put in words how much this @JoshuaFest meant to me. I am honored and thankful for the love of one of my favorite bands growing up, @FiveIronFrenzy, inviting me to come on stage to perform with them. I am unbelievably thankful for the owners of Joshua Fest who invited me, and helped make it happen, even when there were people fighting to not let me perform there. I am humbled and grateful for my friends in @Switchfoot and @RelientK, who took the time to show me so much love and compassion, as we spent time together there. And I’m in awe of how much love I received from the fans, rooting me on with their love and support as I was up there. The people who came up to me, who just told me how much they loved me, and how proud of me they were. I know there were some people there that probably weren’t happy I was there. But, for a festival where people come together to celebrate their love God and their faith in Jesus, it truly felt like the hands of feet and Christ pouring their love out on me. It was an amazing, overwhelming time that I will never forget.

A photo posted by Everyday Sunday (@treypearson) on Sep 7, 2016 at 11:26am PDT

But Pearson’s story ends happily as he still got to perform!

During the festival, the band Five Iron Frenzy invited Pearson onstage to perform their final song with him.

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