Gay Christian pop-singing duo Jason & deMarco will make a few stops in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as part of their Celebrating Diversity Tour.
Jason Warner and deMarco DeCiccio, life partners and recent parents, have been touring and recording together since their first album in 2002. Since then, they have relocated from Hollywood to Tennessee and made a name for themselves performing at churches, festivals and clubs all over the country. The duo also was the subject of a documentary, “We’re All Angels,” from director Robert Nunez, which aired on Showtime.
“It’s certainly not something that we creatively had any say for,” DeCiccio said about the film. “I’m so glad that we decided to accept the director’s proposal to do this. We wanted a fair representation of all aspects of our life and who we are. I feel like the film made no apologies. If we swore, they left that in. They just told a very authentic story about how we balance our life and family, and the coming-out process for them, all the people that we meet, how we balance our relationship and all of that stuff. And somehow they tied it all together with a love story. It’s not an easy thing to do and I can honestly give that DVD to someone and say, ‘This tells the whole story and you will get us and understand who we are from watching this.’”
The documentary also explored how the duo’s openness about their sexuality sometimes pits them against the evangelical Christian community, while their faith sometimes generates resistance from the gay community.
DeCiccio said he prefers to focus on the positive effects the two have on the Christian and LGBT communities.
“We travel in circles where people celebrate our life and what we created,” he said. “I guess we want to see all the good stuff. I met with a new friend for lunch the other day and he said to me, ‘Let’s just address the elephant in the room.’ Basically what he was saying was, ’I don’t agree with your lifestyle but I think you’re amazing and I want to be your friend.’ That was really difficult for me to be OK with, being around someone who thinks my life is less-than because it doesn’t fit in with his religious beliefs. Once in a while, we’re reminded that there’s still so much work to be done. There’s nothing sinful about my gay consensual loving partner that I’ve been together with now for 12 years. We’re finding our way in a city that is in a red state and we have these two beautiful boys that we had through surrogacy. We give them so much love and so much care. We’re giving them a great education and I think we’re doing a better job than a lot of families that we know.”
DeCiccio added that churches are where the duo connect with the majority of their audience.
“We find most support in churches just because it comes with a built-in audience,” he said. “We’ve been working-class artists for 12 years. We don’t really have a big following, just a little bit everywhere we go. It’s a stretch for us to rent a theater and find ways to cleverly promote the show and get the word out. If it wasn’t for the churches, we wouldn’t be doing this anymore. I guess our same-sex family that many people are told should not exist gives hope to a lot of people in our community. It’s a different time and it’s a time when you can have anything you want. So they get behind it to spread the message of God’s love for all people, and that is our passion.”
Jason & deMarco perform 7 p.m. Oct. 10 at Metropolitan Community Church of the Spirit in Harrisburg, 7 p.m. Oct. 11 at Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley in Allentown and 7 p.m. Oct. 12 at Living Waters Lutheran Church in Ringoes, N.J. For more information, visit www.jasonanddemarco.com.