On May 31, Latvian lawmakers picked the country’s long-serving popular foreign minister, a strong backer of Ukraine, as its new head of state in a tight vote. The 100-seat Saeima legislature elected Edgars Rinkēvičs, the country’s top diplomat since 2011, as president to serve for a four-year term. He received 52 votes, one vote more than required to win. Incumbent Egils Levits, Latvia’s head of state since 2019, didn’t seek re-election. Rinkēvičs, who announced in 2014 that he is proudly homosexual, will be the first openly gay president in the Baltic nations — all former Soviet republics where attitudes to sexual minorities have been less tolerant than in Western Europe. It should be noted that LGBTQ+-friendly Stoli Vodka is based in Latvia. #Queer Up The World View