Luxembourg Premier Is First E.U. Leader to Marry Same-Sex Partner

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/europe/luxembourg-premier-is-first-eu-leader-to-marry-same-sex-partner.html

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PARIS — The prime minister of Luxembourg on Friday wed his partner of several years in the first same-sex marriage of a European Union leader.

Prime Minister Xavier Bettel married Gauthier Destenay, a Belgian architect, less than a year after lawmakers in Luxembourg overwhelmingly legalized same-sex marriage, a sign of shifting attitudes in the predominantly Roman Catholic duchy.

Photographs and videos in the Luxembourg news media showed the couple beaming as they arrived hand in hand at the capital’s town hall for the wedding and later waving happily to an assembled crowd after the private ceremony.

Mr. Bettel, a 42-year-old lawyer, is the head of the center-right Democratic Party and was elected prime minister in 2013 after having served as mayor of the capital, the city of Luxembourg. He replaced Jean-Claude Juncker, now head of the European Commission, who had been in power for nearly 19 years.

Mr. Bettel acknowledged that he was gay in 2008 but often played down the significance. “I have just one life, and I don’t want to hide my life,” he told The Los Angeles Times last year. “But I was not the ‘gay candidate.’ People didn’t vote for me because I’m gay or I’m straight.”

Mr. Destenay proposed after several years of a civil partnership, and he was often seen participating in official ceremonies beside Mr. Bettel, whose Twitter page now features a picture of the couple smiling at each other.

Johanna Sigurdardottir, the former prime minister of Iceland, which is not a European Union member, married her female partner in 2010, while still in office.

In an interview with The Luxemburger Wort, Stéphane Bern, a French journalist, noted how Luxembourg, often seen as more conservative than its European neighbors, had surprised even the president of France, where same-sex marriage was legalized in 2013 after months of tumultuous and angry debate.

“François Hollande recently told me that the Grand Duchy, despite being a small country that is perceived as being a bit stern, has turned out to be at the forefront of social issues like same-sex marriage,” Mr. Bern said.