Ireland to Get Gay Prime Minister

[topdog]

First Ireland enacts gay marriage by popular vote, and now this. Add on the EU factor and I may need to go checking out real estate over there. Do they welcome half-Scot/half-American ex-pats?

Gay Lawmaker, Leo Varadkar, Is in Line to Be Ireland’s Prime Minister
New York Times

A gay son of an Indian immigrant is now all but certain to become the next prime minister of Ireland, a country that has rapidly been leaving its conservative Roman Catholic social traditions behind.

Leo Varadkar, who was chosen on Friday by the Fine Gael party to be its leader, and therefore the head of the center-right governing coalition, will be the first openly gay taoiseach (as Ireland’s prime minister is called), and, at 38, the youngest. He succeeds Enda Kenny, who is stepping down.

Mr. Varadkar’s rapid rise to the country’s highest political office, only 10 years after he entered Parliament, owes much to a willingness to speak his mind, a novelty in the normally cautious world of Irish politics...

In 2015, Mr. Varadkar was widely praised for bravery and honesty when he said publicly that he was gay, the first Irish government minister to do so. At the time, Irish voters were debating a proposed constitutional amendment to permit same-sex marriage, and his stand is credited with bolstering the successful “yes” campaign, making Ireland the first country to legalize gay marriage by popular vote.

Mr. Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979, the son of an Irish Catholic nurse from County Waterford and a Hindu doctor from Mumbai, India. His parents met in England in the 1960s and lived in India for a time before moving to Ireland.

 

[brmstn69]

Given that the gay, Indian guy is a member of the "conservative" party, I gotta wonder what the liberals are like...

 

[Giangiacomo]

De Valera, the old fascist who tried to keep Ireland in the middle ages well into the twentieth century must be turning in his grave with gays allowed to get married and run the country

 

[Habukaz]

He's taking over like Theresa May, right? He didn't campaign the public to be elected? Isn't Ireland mostly a tax haven now? It's not even in the G20, except by extension through the EU. The UK, France, Germany and Italy all have individual seats at G20 and G7. Ireland only has a population of 6 million. This is much closer to the gay prime ministers of Luxembourg and Belgium. Granted, Ireland has to worry a bit more about geopolitics with Northern Ireland and Brexit but overall the roles of these countries are not very big.