Singapore—Congratulations are in order for Li Huanwu, the nephew of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and his boyfriend Heng Yirui, who were married in South Africa today, May 24.
In an Instagram post put up in the late afternoon, Dr Heng wrote, “Today I marry my soul mate. Looking forward to a lifetime of moments like this with @hero.unit”
In the photo, there’s an elephant standing in the background and Dr Heng tagged the location of the photo as Cape Town.
Mr Li is the second son of Lee Hsien Yang, PM Lee’s younger brother. He is also the grandson of the founding Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and works as a general manager, while Dr Heng is a veterinarian.
On his Facebook account earlier today, Mr Li wrote “Safari before our big day. #lovewins,” posting photos of himself and his boyfriend, as well as a picture of a dog balancing wedding bands on his nose.
In June of last year, Mr Li came out publicly as a member of the LGBT community when he and Dr Heng were featured in the campaign called Out in Singapore, whose goal was to encourage acceptance and support for “LGBTQ persons who wish to come out to family, friends, and peers in the community.”
The couple posed in a black and white photo with their arms around each other.
Previous to outing himself, he had been vocal in his support for Pink Dot, the yearly event starting from 2009 that supports the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Singapore.
Many netizens have written well-wishes on both Mr Li’s Facebook post and Dr Heng’s Instagram post.
While same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Singapore under the country’s Penal Code Section 377A, Lee Kuan Yew was not against it.
In 2007, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister said, “This business of homosexuality. It raises tempers all over the world, and even in America. If in fact it is true, and I’ve asked doctors this, that you are genetically born a homosexual because that is the nature of genetic random transmission of genes. You can’t help it. So why should we criminalise it?
But there is such a strong inhibition in all societies – Christianity, Islam, even the Hindu, Chinese societies. And we’re now confronted with a persisting aberration, but is it an aberration? It’s a genetic variation.
So what do we do? I think we pragmatically adjust…”/ TISG
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