Personal Life
Di Rupo describes himself as an "atheist, rationalist, and (irregular) Freemason." He is fluent in three languages: Italian, French and English. He is taking classes to improve his Dutch due to it being Belgium's most widely spoken language.
Di Rupo came out as gay in 1996, and when confronted with the accusation that he was gay, he responded "Yes. So what?" He is the first openly gay man to lead a country after Norway's Per-Kristian Foss briefly served as prime minister of his country in 2002. This makes him one of two openly gay or lesbian heads of government, the other being Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir.
Read more about this topic: Elio Di Rupo
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)