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Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and 700 employees join gay pride parade in San Francisco

Jul 01 2013
Written by Joseph McCormick

Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, and over 700 of the company’s employees marched in San Francisco’s gay pride parade on Sunday.

The social network said its employees work various colours of shirts representing the rainbow symbol of the LGBT community.

Employees from Facebook, which has over a billion users worldwide, were joined in the San Francisco parade by former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who is a vocal advocate for equality.

Ayanbadejo donned a purple Facebook shirt and stood alongside Zuckerberg.

On the US Supreme Court rulings which went in favour of equal marriage, last Wednesday, Zuckerberg did post a message to his timeline later in the afternoon, however.

“I’m proud that our country is moving in the right direction, and I’m happy for so many of my friends and their families. #PrideConnectsUs,” he wrote.

Following the US Supreme Court’s decision in favour of same-sex couples in two landmark cases today, many large brands came out to show their support of the decision.

In a moving compilation video posted last week, video site YouTube launched a campaign to feature gay pride videos, and has launched a campaign to inspire LGBT people and their allies to show their pride.

Both rulings saw 5-4 Justices in favour of same sex couples. The first case saw the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) struck down. DOMA, passed in 1996, federally defined marriage as between one man and one woman only.

In the second case, around California’s Proposition 8, the Supreme Court ruled that such a ruling was not in its jurisdiction, nor was it in the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court, which previously ruled, therefore deferring the decision to a previous ruling by a district court which decided the ban was unconstitutional.

Same-sex weddings resumed in California on Friday.