Posted on 06/01/2023 8:20:43 AM PDT by Jan_Sobieski
Latvia's Parliament on Wednesday elected former foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics as President, making him the first openly gay person to hold the position in any country.
"I am honoured and humbled to be elected as President of the Republic of Latvia, I will do my best to serve the people of Latvia well," Rinkevics tweeted following the vote.
While not the first openly gay head of state, Rinkevics's election marks yet another milestone for LGBTQ+ politicians.
Rinkevics came out in 2014, signaling on Twitter his support for a "legal framework for all types of partnerships."
In coming out, Rinkevics became the first openly LGBTQ+ politician in Latvia, which is still considered to be more socially conservative then its Baltic neighbors.
A court in the country last year ruled that same-sex couples are entitled to legal recognition, though marriage and adoption are still exclusively reserved for heterosexual couples.
Rinkevics will become the first openly gay president, but not the first head of state. That distinction is reserved for Paolo Rondelli, who served as one of San Marino's Captain Regents in 2022.
Before his appointment, Rondelli was an outspoken LGBTQ+ activist and served as the country's ambassador to the United States.
Latvia and Eastern Europe progressed on LGBTQ+ rights in an effort to distance themselves from Russian influence, writes Michael Birnbaum for The Washington Post. Although right-wing figures prevail in many of these countries, the general acceptance of gay rights has coincided with many of these countries joining the European Union and embracing EU political values…
(Excerpt) Read more at semafor.com ...
Ding ding ding the winner.
Perhaps. It's very possible he simply never got over the death (perhaps suicide) of his fiancé, Ann Coleman. Years later as he was moving up in politics different women wanted to take him to the altar. His reply was almost always: "Marry I can not, for my affections were buried in the grave.”
Or was it “...for my affectations were buried in the grave.”
Quick, a blue (and red and green and yellow and purple) ribbon congressional commission to investigate. Table everything else.
Putin must be quaking in his loafers...
Ok, why do they have to be openly gay, LBTQ? I do believe that is what most the whole conversation offensive to me.
I’ve heard people speak on this who said they didn’t believe he was gay at all.
And in response to those who believe the very scant ‘evidence’ of his purported transvestism, cross dressers are actually more likely to be heterosexual males than to be gay.
The accusation that Buchanan was gay comes from a gay historian who interpreted an affectionate letter to a friend as evidence he was gay.
There’s no proof whatsoever, but it has stuck.
The cross dressing is not the evidence.
The evidence is the long history of his personal life and where he spent time on his vacations.
His gay trysts were arranged by the Mob in New York City and La Costa in California.
And you know this, how? You read it somewhere?
People can have all sorts of developmental or simply natural issues that make them sexually repressed or even asexual. That doesn’t mean they are actively homosexual.
They’ve done this with lots of people in history - it’s the old version of demonizing people by calling them ‘racists’.
Walt Whitman comes to mind - because of the affectionate and passionate terms of his time through which he often expressed himself, they decided he was ‘gay’. And they just DECIDE that all sorts of asexual people were ‘gay’.
Some just can’t understand people who happen to think and feel or choose to live differently.
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