Award-winning actress Lü Liping will not be a presenter at the this year's Golden Horse Awards after posting anti-gay remarks on her microblog, said Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the chairman of the festival's executive committee.
"The Golden Horse Awards cannot control what winners say," Hou said. "But we don't support or recognize any biased remarks."
"Regarding if we will invite Ms. Lü to the Taipei ceremony this year, we will put off this plan."
Lü, who is a self-proclaimed born-again evangelical, drew harsh criticism from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community after expressing support for homophobic sentiments of a Chinese pastor in New York, which became the largest U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage last week, according to the Shanghaiist.
Pastor Feng Wei of the Victory Baptist Chinese Mission of Rochester wrote on his microblog on June 26: "Last night, the New York State Senate legalized same-sex marriage. This is the sixth state in the U.S., and the largest one so far, to do so. May God have mercy on this land which is falling into depravity every day! Even if some day, the law makes it illegal for me to speak against homosexuality, I will continue to preach: Homosexuality is sin. God loves sinners, but he hates sin! Believe in Jesus, gain victory over your sin, and move from Death to Life."
The Shanghaiist reports that Lü then told her 125,000 followers to "Retweet this, brothers and sisters!" She also retweeted the pastor's posting of Romans 1:26-27, an anti-gay passage often cited by Christian traditionalists.
Gay groups have called for a boycott of Lü's movies, while angry netizens have been posting anti-divorce passages from the Bible passages and calling Lü and her husband, Sun Haiying, an "adulterous pair." Sun is Lü's third husband, and Lü is Sun's second wife.
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