Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook,
has donated $10,000 to fight a proposed constitutional amendment that
would ban gay marriage in North Carolina.
Hughes, who is gay and a native of
North Carolina, on Friday pledged to donate $10 to Equality North
Carolina, the state's largest gay rights group, for each “like”
the group received on its Facebook page, up to $10,000. The group
hit the goal within hours of the announcement.
In January, Hughes, 28, announced that
he and Sean Eldridge were engaged to marry. Eldridge, 25, is the
President of the Telos Foundation and a senior adviser at Freedom to
Marry, a nationwide group dedicated to the legalization of gay
marriage. The couple was featured on the May cover of gay glossy The
Advocate.
Hughes also penned an open letter to
North Carolina lawmakers urging them to oppose the amendment.
“Companies like Facebook, Google and
Apple are the future of our global economy,” Hughes wrote. “But
the proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment signals to these and
other major employers, as well as their mobile, educated employees,
that North Carolina does not welcome the diverse workforce that any
state needs to compete in the international marketplace.”
Lawmakers return to Raleigh on Monday
to debate whether to send the amendment to the ballot box in 2012.