Emmanuel Macron wins French presidential election against anti-LGBT opponent Marine Le Pen
Emmanuel Macron has been elected the next president of France following a tight race between him and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Macron won the election taking 65.5 per cent of the vote, compared to the 34.5 per cent won by Le Pen.
A turnout of just 65.3 per cent of people was recorded at five o’clock in the evening, an hour before the polls closed.
Macron is a staunch supporter of LGBT rights and equality, having dedicated an entire section of his manifesto to addressing issues that the LGBT community faces.
The newly elected president, who is the youngest president to ever be elected in France, has pledged to end everyday homophobia as well as work place anti-LGBT discrimination.
He has also promised to defend equal marriage, a legislation that Macron has deemed “an enrichment of what the family is in France that shows its importance to all of us”.
His anti-LGBT opponent, Le Pen, had promised to abolish the law that created marriage equality in the country, burying the policy in a manifesto of 144 pledges.
She also outlined plans to restrict access to fertility services and prevent gay couples from having children.
However Macron, who recently appeared topless on gay magazine Garçon, has committed to opening up IVF and other fertility treatments to single women and female same-sex couples.
The socialist politician has failed to pledge to change strict surrogacy laws because of the opposition he would face, but promised that children born via international surrogacy would have their rights protected.
Surprisingly, a third of French gays said that they would be voting for Le Pen despite her anti-LGBT policies and views.
It is believed she made inroads with white conservative gay voters by playing off concerns about Islamic extremism, despite her manifesto promise to scrap same-sex marriage.
Polling after of the first round of voting showed Le Pen’s popularity surge, with 36.5 per cent of gay men saying they would vote for her – up from 20 percent before the first round of voting.
The poll, which was carried out by popular gay dating app Hornet, found that 63.5 percent of gay men would be voting for Emmanuel Macron.
In an interview with the Russian controlled news outlet Sputnik, National Assembly member Nicolas Dhuicq claimed that “there is very wealthy gay lobby” behind Macron with a number of “open homosexuals” close to him.
The former economy minister, who tied the knot with wife Brigitte Trogneux in 2007, laughed off the claims.
He said: “I hear people saying that I have a secret life or something. It’s not nice for Brigitte… she is asking herself how I could physically do that. She shares my life from morning to night.”
Macron’s win comes after his campaign was allegedly hacked and a mass of data, including thousands of emails, were dumped online.
The documents were leaked shortly after midnight on Friday after an electioneering blackout, which lasts until polls closed on Sunday, was started.
