Word: mayorally
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...closet and into their country's highest political offices. Eleven openly gay men and women now serve in the British Parliament, including two in the Cabinet. Last June, Nicolas Sarkozy appointed Frédéric Mitterrand, a gay television presenter, to the post of Minister of Culture. Paris' Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, tipped by some to contest the 2012 presidential race, is gay. And Guido Westerwelle, chairman of Germany's Free Democratic Party, has just become his country's Foreign Minister, joining a gay élite that includes the mayors of Berlin and Hamburg, Germany's two largest cities...
That's a far cry from the climate in most of the U.S., where - despite the recent election of Annise Parker, a gay woman, as mayor of Houston, America's fourth largest city - honesty can still end a gay politician's career. Openly gay politicians such as San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk began winning seats in U.S. cities with large gay populations in the 1970s. Progress has since slowed, says David Rayside, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He believes that the relative strength of incumbency in the U.S. creates a barrier to the corridors...
...University, believes that a politician who discloses his sexual orientation is insulated from criticism. "They embody a certain authenticity and credibility because they're open," he says. By contrast, opponents who make sexuality an issue are typically viewed as mean-spirited and politically incompetent. When Hamburg's former vice mayor Ronald Schill outed the city's Mayor Ole von Beust at a press conference in 2003, Germans mocked Schill, and Von Beust went on to win the 2004 elections in a landslide...
...helps that Europe's liberal laws - 18 European countries allow gay marriage or same-sex civil unions, and gay couples in nine countries can adopt children - have largely normalized perceptions of gays. Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, believes the legal framework for gay partnerships has "forced respect." (Girard is in a civil partnership with his partner of 13 years and has two children). "Gays are no longer just seen as partiers, but also as parents," he says. Paris, of course, is not rural France. But even in Barsac, a village of 2,200 people in the country...
...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 back progress," he says. So long as they remain hidden, he argues, gay leaders will remain an oddity. "I don't mean that they have to wave a banner...