Grindr president defends controversial LGBTQ marriage remarks
He wrote on Facebook that marriage is "between man and woman."
The president of Grindr is trying to walk back controversial same-sex marriage comments reported by the app's in-house magazine and elsewhere. "Some people think that marriage is a holy union between a man and a woman, I think so too, but that's your own business," Scott Chen wrote on Facebook yesterday. The post, originally reported by Grindr's Into magazine, had users of the app and LGBTQ+ publications like Out wondering whether he supported gay rights.
Chen called the Into article "unbalanced and misleading," and criticized the publication for not asking for comment. "The reason I said marriage is a holy matrimony between a man and a woman is based on my own personal experience," he said in Into's comments section. "I am a straight man married to a woman I love and I have two beautiful daughters I love from the marriage. This is how I feel about my marriage." (Into's editor-in-chief Zach Stafford said it asked for comment through Grindr's spokesperson but never received a response.)
The reason I said marriage is a holy matrimony between a man and a woman is based on my own personal experience. I am a straight man married to a woman I love and I have two beautiful daughters I love from the marriage. This is how I feel about my marriage. Different people have their different feelings about their marriages. You can't deny my feelings about my marriage.
Grindr was recently purchased by the Chinese gaming company Kunlun Group, which appointed Chen as chief technology officer. The controversy came about after Taiwan voted overwhelmingly against same-sex marriage in a referendum. Chen shared an Into article noting that HTC's President, Cher Wang, had financially backed a US-based christian group organized to defeat the motion.
In the same post, he noted that "I won't buy HTC products for the rest of my life, and I won't donate any money to Taiwan's Christian groups ever again for the rest of my life!" He added that he's "a huge advocate for LGBTQ+ rights since I was young. I support gay marriage and I am proud that I can work for Grindr."
Grindr has 3.8 million daily users around the globe, and is the largest dating app for non-hetero people, Into notes. It has since updated its article to include Chen's response, but Stafford told the Guardian that Into stands by the reporting.
"Grindr's goal as a company is to help seek the full equity of all LGBT people's rights around the world, especially when it comes to dating and love. And marriage for many is an end goal to our app," he said. "We stand by the reporting ... we are very interested in telling the stories that impact queer people most [and] the Into staff sees this as doing their job."
