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Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel is getting married to his gay partner today. He would become the first European Union leader to enter into a same-sex marriage, a symbol of growing social change across the continent.
Bettel, 42, will wed Gauthier Destenay, a Belgian architect, at the town hall in Luxembourg.
Sources said the low-key ceremony is being deliberately kept out off the media spotlight and will be followed by weekend-long private celebrations for around 500 guests, sources said.
Among those invited are Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.
As well as being the first leader in the 28-nation EU to wed a gay partner, Bettel is only the second in the world after Iceland’s prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, who married her writer partner in 2010.
Speaking to Belgium’s RTBF public television on Thursday, Bettel said: “I could have hidden it or repressed it and been unhappy my whole life. I could have had relations with someone of the other sex while having homosexual relations in secret.
“But I told myself that if you want to be a politician be honest in politics, you have to be honest with yourself and to accept that you are who you are.”
Same-sex marriage was approved by Luxembourg’s parliament in June 2014 and the first weddings took place on January 1, 2015.