Word: gay
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Demographic shifts may also play a part. For a growing number of people in a continent grappling with how to assimilate migrants, the gay community can seem less threatening than recent arrivals from the Muslim world. "It's creepy," says Rayside of the University of Toronto, "but sexual minorities are seen as a safer and more respectable minority because they know what 'Britishness' or 'Dutchness' is." A 2008 poll, for example, found that while only 27% of Dutch voters would approve of a Muslim Prime Minister, 78% would approve of a homosexual in the same role. (See pictures of Muslims...
...Road Ahead For its part, Britain's Conservative Party has come a long way since Section 28, which the Labour government repealed in 2003. David Cameron, the Tory leader, apologized for the law at a gay-pride event last June. In October, the Conservatives even organized an official "gay night" at their annual party conference. Among gay activists, debate still rages over whether leaders who have not gone public with their sexuality should do so. Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, knows several elected officials who keep their sexuality private. "By not accepting their homosexuality publicly, closeted politicians are holding...
Wowereit, Berlin's mayor, is all of those things: he regularly appears with his neurosurgeon boyfriend at public events and ran for office with the slogan "I'm gay and that's a good thing." But even he doesn't believe a level playing field exists yet. "As long as the sexual orientation of a candidate is publicly discussed at all," he says, "one has to assume that it's still not normal for a gay person to aim for such a position...
Still, that's a long way from the climate faced by many gay politicians in America. Opponents of gay candidates there often focus the race on sexuality - and have found that it wins them more votes. Jim Roth, former Oklahoma county commissioner and the state's first publicly elected gay official, says that in 2002, rivals wrongly claimed his partner had AIDS. In 2006, church groups, he says, passed out literature claiming he would "advance the homosexual agenda." In 2008, while running for a post to oversee the state's energy resources, he faced similar attacks and lost. "Their coordinated...
...group fighting for the right to marry and serve in the military while openly gay, success in politics is about more than pride. "We need to have people at the table of power when decisions are being made about our lives," says Dison of the Victory Fund. "Our straight allies and nonallies get to know us as human beings, and that tends to affect hearts and minds...