Hong Kong Billionaire Offers $65M to Man Who Courts Lesbian Daughter

A Hong Kong billionaire who has been compared to Hugh Hefner is offering $65 million to any man who can woo his daughter into marrying him. The challenge? She's happily out as a lesbian and has allegedly married a woman, ABC News reports.

Aging Hong Kong playboy Cecil Chao Sze-tung, 76, is a real estate and shipping tycoon and has been in and out of the city's tabloids since the '70s. The billionaire has never tied the knot himself, but over the years, he's had several women at his side. Chao once said he's slept with more than 10,000 women, ABC notes.

Perhaps the businessman is exaggerating, but he did manage to father three children from three different women. He himself opposes the idea of marriage -- at least for himself.

Chao apparently is against same-sex marriage as well, since he refuses to accept that his daughter, Gigi Chao, 33, is a lesbian and is married long-time partner Sean Eav earlier this year in Paris.

Chao says he will pay any man HK$500 million (U.S.$65 million) who can convince his lesbian daughter to separate from her wife and marry him.

"I don't mind whether he is rich or poor. The important thing is that he is generous and kind-hearted," Chao told the South China Morning Post. He also said that reports of his daughter marrying a woman were "false."

"Gigi is a very good woman with both talents and looks. She is devoted to her parents, is generous and does volunteer work," he added.

Chao's bizarre offer has sparked a great deal of interest, however, as his daughter's Facebook and Twitter accounts have exploded with requests and followers since her father's announcement.

"Where do all these people come from? Jerusalem? Ethiopia? Istanbul? Ridiculous," Gigi Chao wrote on her Facebook.

In an interview with the Morning Post, she dismissed her father's statements by saying she found it all "quite entertaining." She would not admit or deny that she is a lesbian or that she married her girlfriend, however.

"I'm not afraid to admit anything. But I do want to respect my parents," she told the paper. When the paper asked her if her father did not support her alleged marriage, she said, "He loves the attention."

Currently, Hong Kong does not recognize marriage equality. Public opinion on the LGBT community is mixed. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 56 percent of the city's citizens believed gay men and women were in a "good place," while 35 percent said they were "not in a good place."

As ABC points out, the city-state, a former British colony that is governmentally part of China but has preserved its own more democratic Western-style institutions, is generally conservative when it comes to homosexuality. Gigi Chao acknowledged prevailing attitudes in the interview. "It's still an uncomfortable issue for many people," she conceded.