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Grindr exec publicly resigns in protest of straight president’s comment on marriage

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A Grindr executive has resigned in protest of the company president’s comments about marriage equality.

In November, the website INTO posted about a comment made by Grindr president Scott Chen on Facebook. Chen is straight and lives in Taiwan.

“Some people think the marriage is a holy matrimony between a man and a woman. And I think so too. But that’s your own business,” Chen wrote, according to the machine-generated Facebook translation. “Some people think the purpose of the marriage is to have a child carries your DNA. But again, that’s your own business.”

Chen said that his words weren’t being interpreted fairly, and that his Facebook post was about how he was boycotting a company that was giving money to a campaign that opposed marriage equality in Taiwan.

“The words I chose related to marriage between a man and a woman were meant to express my personal feelings about my own marriage to my wife – not to suggest that I am opposed to marriage equality,” he later wrote.

Related: Gay Trump supporter alerts FBI that Grindr shut down his account

But Grindr’s head of communications, Landon Rafe Zumwalt, wrote on Medium that he didn’t want to defend Chen’s words.

“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,” Zumwalt wrote.

“While that resulted in my time at Grindr being cut short, I have absolutely no regrets.”

He closed with words of encouragement for his former colleagues: “For those who remain, those who will continue to fight for our community from within, know I will be cheering you on from the sidelines. Persist. Make your voices heard. And never compromise who you are for someone else.”

A spokesperson for Grindr confirmed that he resigned but did not offer details.

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