Xavier Bettel and Gauthier Destenay

Photo via Reuters/YouTube

Luxembourg’s ‘first gentleman’ joins first ladies at NATO summit

Score one for progress.

 

Samantha Grasso

Layer 8

Posted on May 26, 2017   Updated on May 24, 2021, 1:01 pm CDT

 

Love wins and gender takes a step toward equality—at least it does in this NATO summit group photo.

On Thursdays, 10 wives and partners of world leaders took a group photo at the NATO summit in Brussels. Among them, in the back row, towered Gauthier Destenay, the husband of Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, and Luxembourg’s “first gentleman.”

https://twitter.com/rolacolaandalex/status/868063328316399617

According to HuffPost, Bettel and Destenay have been in a civil partnership since 2013, when Bettel won prime minister. Two years later, the couple married after the country’s passage of marriage equality, making Bettel the first European Union leader to be married to someone of the same gender.

Photographed with Destenay were U.S. First Lady Melania Trump; France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron; Turkey’s First Lady Emine Gulbaran Erdogan; Queen Mathilde of Belgium; Ingrid Schulerud, the partner of Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg; the partner of Bulgaria’s president, Desislava Radeva; the partner of Belgium’s prime minister, Amelie Derbaudrenghien; the partner of Slovenia’s prime minister, Mojca Stropnik; and Iceland’s First Lady Thora Margret Baldvinsdottir.

H/T HuffPost

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*First Published: May 26, 2017, 4:26 pm CDT