A Vietnamese grandma has won the internet by speaking out in support of marriage equality in Australia.
William, a young Vietnamese-Australian, is the grandson of Ba, who features prominently in this video from the Australian Marriage Equality Facebook page. Ba moved from Vietnam to Australia in 1983 and spent much of her time raising William, one of her eight grandchildren.
While older generations are often thought to be set in their ways, Ba breaks from the usual conservative stance: when William brought his boyfriend home, Ba knew where she stood on the issue of same-sex marriage.
“Boyfriend or girlfriend is the same kind of love, there is no difference,” she says in the video.
Last month, the Australian parliament shot down a bill which would have allowed Australians to vote on the legalization of same-sex marriage in the country, reports the New York Times. According to the news outlet, this decision “ended hopes for a change in the country’s marriage laws in the near future”.
Though Vietnam, too, has yet to achieve marriage equality, the country has made remarkable progress on LGBT rights in the last few years. From abolishing a ban on same-sex marriage in 2015 to holding increasingly visible Viet Pride celebrations across the country, attitudes in the country have begun to shift.
There is still plenty of work to do, of course – so far, no country in Asia has legalized same-sex marriage, though Taiwan is close – but the tides are beginning to turn in favor of LGBT rights: in 2014, a joint survey by Vietnam’s Institute for Studies of Society, Economy and Environment and the Health Strategy and Policy Institute found that 38% of respondents supported marriage equality.
[Video via Australian Marriage Equality]
