Landen Rafe Zumwalt, Grindr’s head of communications, resigned on Friday over remarks about same-sex marriage made by company president Scott Chen. Grindr is the Chinese-owned gay hook-up app.
Chen’s remarks, that marriage is a “holy matrimony between a man and a woman,” made headlines earlier this month. Chen said that his remarks, which were made on an article about Cher Wang, the founder of the Chinese tech company HTC, who had backed groups that opposed same-sex marriage, had been poorly translated by Facebook’s automatic translator and that properly translated showed that he in fact supported marriage equality.
“I am a huge advocate for LGBTQ+ rights since I was young. I support gay marriage and I am proud that I can work for Grindr,” Chen said in a follow-up statement.
Zumwalt announced his resignation in a post on Medium, writing, in part: “As an out and proud gay man madly in love with a man I don’t deserve, I refused to compromise my own values or professional integrity to defend a statement that goes against everything I am and everything I believe. While that resulted in my time at Grindr being cut short, I have absolutely no regrets. And neither should you.”
