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LUXEMBORUG’S PM HAS become the first EU leader to marry a same-sex partner.
Xavier Bettel and Gauthier Destenay were wed in a private ceremony yesterday – making the couple one of the first to benefit after the country changed its laws last year to allow same-sex marriages.
Bettel formed a government at the end of 2013 – seeing him become the country’s first openly gay PM.
Bettel, 42, last year announced his plans to marry Belgian architect Gauthier Destenay once the law came into effect.
The first same-sex couples married on 1 January of this year.
The pair were wed in a civil ceremony at Luxembourg’s town hall, where the pair were met by a group of around 100 well wishers.
A night before the wedding, Bettlel reportedly told Belgium’s RTBF public television, “I could have hidden it or repressed it and been unhappy my whole life. I could have had relations with someone of the other sex while having homosexual relations in secret.”
But I told myself that if you want to be a politician, be honest in politics, you have to be honest with yourself and to accept that you are who you are.
Other gay leaders in Europe
In 2010 Iceland’s then PM Johanna Sigurdardottir married her same-sex partner – although Iceland is not part of the EU.
The EU’s first openly gay head of government came in 2011 in Belgium when Elio Di Rupo became the Prime Minister of Belgium.
Di Rupo was in attendance at the wedding yesterday, saying he had come for a “friend’s wedding”.
- Additional reporting by from AFP
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