Ted Osius (aka Theodore George Osius III) was one of the openly gay diplomats that President Barack Obama appointed to be a United States Ambassador. (Remember those good old days!) Osius was appointed to head up the US Embassy in Vietnam in 2014 and this Vietnamese-speaking Ambassador moved to Saigon with his husband of 8 years Clayton Bond who had also worked in the Foreign Service.
When Osisu arrived to take up his post, he and Bond took their toddler son, Tabo who was soon joined by their adopted five-month-old baby daughter, called Lucy. The time could not have been more fortuitous as literally just days before the Vietnamese government repealed a law banning same-sex marriage.
They ended up not just representing the US but they quickly became viewed as ambassadors of the Southeast Asian nation’s LGBT rights movement, which has become more prevalent since the revision of the gay marriage law.
In an interview with Bloomberg Osius said: ‘A lot of young people have reached out to me on Facebook, to say: “We are happy to see somebody who is gay and is happy in his personal life but also has had professional success”. I don’t think of it as advocating as much as supporting Vietnamese civil society in doing what it is already doing.’
Then in 2016, Filmmaker Tim Wolff was granted a brief interview with Osius and Bond. The subject was FAMILY. This brief glance at the lives of this delightful married couple and their family is a sheer joy to watch and will make your heart sing.
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