LUXEMBOURG’S GAY PRIME MINISTER TO MARRY PARTNER
Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and his fiancé Gauthier Destenay (Pic: Facebook)
Xavier Bettel, the openly gay Prime Minister of Luxembourg, has revealed that he’s planning to tie the knot.
Speaking to the LA Times about his partner, architect Gauthier Destenay, Bettel said: “He asked me, and I said yes.”
He added with a grin: “I can’t give you the date, because it’s not official yet.” The two are reportedly already in a civil union.
When Bettel, 41, came into office in December last year, Luxembourg became the third country in the world to have an openly gay head of state (Iceland and Belgium were first and second).
In June, the country’s parliament finally passed a same-sex marriage bill which had been in limbo since 2009. The law is set to come into effect in January.
Bettel, who often attends official functions with Destenay, promised to legalise same-sex marriage as part of his election campaign.
“I have just one life, and I don’t want to hide my life,” he said to the Times. “But I was not the ‘gay candidate.’ People didn’t vote for me because I’m gay or I’m straight.”
Luxembourg is a small landlocked country in Western Europe, with a population of around 524,853 people. An April 2013 survey found that 83% of its citizens supported same-sex marriage rights while 55% backed same-sex adoption
Leave a Reply