Newly married, two men with matching red ties held hands and smiled broadly as they bounded out of San Francisco City Hall on a recent sunny day.
Although a common enough situation in the city’s Bay Area, the marriage ceremony for this couple was different in one respect: One of the men was US consul general in Shanghai, Hanscom Smith.
Photographs of his marriage, posted on Tuesday on the official Chinese microblog account of the US consul general, generated interest in China, which does not allow same-sex marriage.
Smith married Lu Ying-zong (呂英宗), or Eric Lu, who is from Taipei.
One Chinese netizen using the name Daniel Chen Dandan (陳丹丹) posted an image of a beating heart on a microblog, writing: “Respect any type of love.”
A few official Chinese news media Web sites picked up the photographs of the wedding and posted a short accompanying announcement.
One photograph showed the men exchanging rings in front of a judge in San Francisco.
The reports of the marriage were pointed reminders for some that China prohibits same-sex marriage.
A gay couple in Hunan Province filed a lawsuit last year for the right to be married, and a local court surprisingly accepted the case in early January, but a judge ruled against the couple last month.
One of those men, Sun Wenlin (孫文麟), was told in a telephone interview on Tuesday night that Smith and Lu had married in San Francisco.
“I support them very much,” he said. “My best wishes to them.”
He added that he hopes the visibility of the marriage would push Chinese officials to allow same-sex marriage in the future.
“As long as more and more gay couples are willing to be seen by the public, it’s all useful,” he said.
Despite the court ruling, Sun said he had made plans with his partner, Hu Mingliang, to hold a marriage ceremony in a park on May 17, the International Day Against Homophobia.
He recently helped start a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for 100 gay couples across China to hold public marriage ceremonies.
Smith has served in embassy posts around the world, including in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Thailand, as well as at the Taipei office of the American Institute in Taiwan.
In an interview posted on a Web site of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, Smith said that it is important for US officials such as him “to engage with the Chinese audience directly through social media,” adding that it is “a very valuable tool for us.”
In September 2014, the British consul general in Shanghai, Brian Davidson, married his Chinese-American partner, Scott Chang, at the residence of the British ambassador in Beijing.
Their wedding caused a stir on Chinese social media networks.
Smith, who had arrived in Shanghai earlier that month, was asked by the Global Times, an official newspaper, whether he would marry Lu in China and whether he had any thoughts on Davidson’s wedding.
“I have not yet had the chance to meet my British counterpart,” Smith said. “But I congratulate him on his wedding.”
In December 2014, US ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius arrived in Hanoi with his husband Clayton Bond to start his new post.
They brought their son and later adopted a daughter.
They renewed their vows at the ambassador’s residence in Hanoi in August last year; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court presided.
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