President Emmanuel Macron of France has appointed 34-year-old Education Minister Gabriel Attal as his new prime minister.
At 34, Gabriel Attal is France’s youngest post-war and first openly known gay prime minister. He was outed by an old school associate in 2018 when he was named a junior minister during Macron’s first mandate.
Attal joined the Socialist Party when he was 17. He became a household name in French politics after being named government spokesman during the pandemic. He would later be named as a junior minister in the finance ministry and then education minister in 2023, making a name for himself as one of Macron’s savviest cabinet ministers and a smooth communicator.
Attal’s first move following his appointment as education minister last year was to ban the Muslim abaya dress in state schools, earning himself a popularity boost among many conservative voters despite his hailing from the left.
Attal recently went on a famous TV show to tell the story of how he was bullied in middle school by a former classmate, who he said shamed him on a blog created to rate classmates’ physiques during the early days of the Internet revolution.
Meanwhile, same-sex marriage has been legal in France since 18 May 2013, making France the thirteenth country worldwide to allow same-sex couples to marry. The legislation applies to metropolitan France as well as to all French overseas departments and territories.
A bill granting same-sex couples the right to marry and jointly adopt children was introduced to the National Assembly by the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on 7 November 2012, with the support of President François Hollande who declared his intent to support the legislation during his campaign for the presidency.
On 12 February 2013, the National Assembly approved the bill in a 329–229 vote.
