One CEO in Taiwan is getting praised for supporting his LGBTQ employee.
John Li is the CEO of HSBC Taiwan, a bank and credit card company. While Li is known for his business savvy mind, he also showed himself to be a kind man recently by supporting one of his employees.
One HSBC employee named Jennifer has had a rocky relationship with her parents since coming out. She and her homophobic parents have fought constantly about her sexual orientation and her relationship with a woman named Sam.
“Whenever my father sees Sam, he will push her out and tell her to get lost,” Jennifer says in the below video of the wedding produced by HSBC.
Then when Jennifer told her parents she was getting married to Sam, they refused to attend. Jennifer’s employer John Li then stepped up. Li offered to not only go to the event but walk Jennifer down the aisle.
“CEO John told us not to be nervous and to walk slowly,” Jennifer adds. “We cried because we never thought we would make it this far.”
If you want to see some of that beautiful wedding yourself, you can watch the video below.
While the above ceremony is beautiful, same-sex marriage is not legal yet in Taiwan. Jennifer and Sam admitted that they simply wanted to have the ceremony and record it as a message to celebrate gay love.
Gay marriage in Taiwan will be arriving on May 25 after two years post-the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize it. The high court gave lawmakers that grace period to update national law, or the change would happen automatically. While lawmakers then pandered to conservative Christians who opposed the altering of the Civil Code, the referendum against an update did not overrule the introduction of gay marriage as a whole.
In order to celebrate the arrival of marriage equality, many LGBTQ couples and allies are planning a large wedding reception on May 25. We’re sure there will be a large tide of marriages once the unions become officially legal.
