Luxembourg’s Prime Minister to marry partner this week

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel is set to marry his same-sex partner later this week, according to reports. The 42-year-old is set to make use of the equal marriage laws introduced by his own government earlier this year by tying the knot with his partner Gauthier Destenay, who he has been in a civil partnership with since March 2010. 

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel (r), with his civil partner Gauthier Destenay (l).

Sources told AFP that Bettel and Destenay want the service to be private, and have declined to have press photographers at the event. “He does not want to put his private life in the public spotlight and he has turned down requests from the celebrity magazines to cover the event,” a source told the agency. The couple have been engaged to be married since August last year, shortly after the country’s equal marriage bill was enacted by the Chamber of Deputies in June. The first ceremonies began taking place on January 1 this year. Luxembourg is the only country in the world to have both a gay Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Etienne Schneider. Bettel is the tiny nation’s first openly gay Prime Minister and the third openly gay head of government following Iceland’s former Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir and Belgium’s former Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo. He is currently the world’s only openly gay leader. Good luck for the big day, Xavier and Gautier! How long until the UK’s first same-sex prime ministerial marriage? More stories: Jane Fonda: ‘A very famous gay actor once proposed to me’ Watch Mariah Carey get a lapdance from Tyson Beckford