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

[IndianaGreen]

Meanwhile in America, the White House hosts a private reception for submissive gay "leaders" who have to use a side entrance to get in. No openly LGBTs in Obama's cabinet. DADT and DOMA are still the law of the land. Rick Warren is still welcome at the front entrance of the White House.

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.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-sidelines-young-black-cabinet-minister-1715997.html

[QC]

1. And, to make it even better, Sarkozy is a conservative!

(By French standards, at least.)

[MNBrewer]

2. Department of Culture

how stereotypical ;) hehe

[joeybee12]

3. "The strikingly beautiful".....

...hmmm kind of a subjective article all around.