Dad and I have a very close father-daughter relationship and we love each other very much.” But there are moments where he does show that respect for me and we talk to each other as friends. For parents, I think it’s sometimes quite difficult. “Since coming out, the good thing is that there are now moments when he actually treats me as an adult. But in terms of relationships, your expectations of me and the reality of who I am are not coherent.”įour years on from that letter, Gigi remains close to her father, but he still rarely sees her wife. “He doesn’t see Sean much, but we bump into each other sometimes at social events, at the Tatler Ball, for example,” Gigi says. “As your daughter, I want nothing more than to make you happy. “You are one of the most mentally astute, energetic yet well-mannered and hard-working people this humble earth has ever known,” Gigi wrote. So for all Hong Kong’s claims to be “Asia’s world city,” just how LGBT-friendly is it? It’s a tough question to answer, say some of the city’s leading LGBT personalities who recently gathered at Douglas Young’s Mid-Levels home for a roundtable discussion on the state of LGBT rights in Hong Kong.Īs this discussion took place on the eve of Pride Month, which is celebrated in June, it was an especially appropriate time to reflect on the lives of the city’s LGBT residents. This isn’t a story from the 1960s, when homosexuality was still illegal in most countries this happened in Hong Kong in 2014, the same year that Britain legalised same-sex marriage, Apple CEO Tim Cook came out as gay and Jared Leto won an Oscar for playing a transgender activist in Dallas Buyers Club.Įven the conservative Catholic Church softened its stance on homosexuality in 2014, with Pope Francis declaring “homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community.” Kayla’s disappointment is understandable.