Sarkozy sidelines young black cabinet minister (appoints first openly gay minister)

[IndianaGreen]

Source: The Independent (UK)

Sarkozy sidelines young black cabinet minister

First overtly gay politician is appointed to head French department of culture

By John Lichfield in Paris

Wednesday, 24 June 2009

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a larger than expected government reshuffle last night, sidelining his emblematic, young black minister Rama Yade and giving France its first overtly gay cabinet minister.

<snip>

The film-maker, writer and TV presenter Frédéric Mitterrand, 61, nephew of the late President François Mitterrand, will become culture minister, a very high-profile job in France. This appointment, welcomed by many in the artistic world, will irritate the Catholic, conservative right. M. Mitterrand is a vociferous campaigner for homosexual rights and a columnist in the gay magazine, Tétu.

The reshuffle left most major posts, including Prime Minister François Fillon, foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and finance minister Christine Lagarde, untouched. The interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie moves to justice to replace Mme Dati. She is replaced at the politically sensitive interior ministry by a Sarkozy childhood friend and loyalist, Brice Hortefeux.

President Sarkozy also took the opportunity to settle a few scores and punish ministers who had defied or disappointed him. Rama Yade, 32, the strikingly beautiful, Senegalese-born junior foreign minister for human rights, was one of the great symbols of M. Sarkozy's "ouverture" to racial minorities, women and youth when she was first appointed in 2007. She has since angered the President by taking an independent line on Libya and China and refusing to be sent into internal exile to the European Parliament.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-...

[tocqueville]

1. curiously in France nobody talks about the "gay" thing

but rather that he politically belongs to the socialist party and is the nephew of former President François Mitterand. Then that his "gayness" will "irritate" the Catholic conservative right is a non issue, since they are so few and nobody cares about them. Another British caricatural fantasy.

And Mitterand is not the first gay state secretary, Roger Karoutchi (of Jewish-Moroccan origins) is and he outed himself.

Besides the Mayor of Paris is so openly gay one can be and is a potential Presidential candidate.

[Flagg]

2. Sidelined ?

She was appointed as minister of sport which is far more high profile than her previous job.