As many people know who pay attention to Canadian politics, Ontario became the first province to have an openly gay politician as premier for the last few years, and also the first openly gay first minister (leader of a province or country) in the British Commonwealth, and the first openly gay serving premier or governor in North America.
There have been gay leaders before, in both the US and Canada, but they weren't out during their term of office (Jim McGreevey of New Jersey came out in the speech where he resigned).
Well, there was always a bit of an asterisk next to that datapoint because Kathleen Wynne had assumed leadership of the Liberal Party of Ontario through their leadership convention last year. She hadn't been elected to the job during a provincial election.
Tonight, that changed.
Wynne has just become the first openly gay leader who won the position in a general election in North America with the Liberals going from minority status to a slim majority.
Now, there's two things of note in this election, one related to this, one not.
The first is...it wasn't an issue. At all. The only mention that came up during the campaign was an offhand remark Wynne made that it wouldn't have been possible that long ago for her and her wife to be officially recognized (her wife traveled around the province campaigning with her). Other than that, no one openly cared. And that's where you want society to go, where someone's sexual orientation is simply something no one cares about.
The second thing is that the election was largely fought over the budget: the Liberals presented a fairly centrist, although with some decent progressive elements budget that the NDP, although there was nothing in it they'd find exceptionally objectionable, for some absurd reason wouldn't support (which triggered the election due to the Liberals being a minority government). On the Conservative side, leader Tim Hudak was promising to cut 100,000 public sector jobs, slash spending, cut taxes, and a million new jobs would be magically created.
I'm sure you've heard that before.
The Liberals not only campaigned on their budget, Wynne was pointing at Thomas Picketty and Capital in the 21st Century as something government should pay attention to, while Hudak was on the Slash Everything Austerity plan that's been common for years now all around the world. There was no question voters had a choice as to what vision of government and the economy they were voting for.
The Liberals were mired in old scandals which Wynne inherited, there was some concern that being gay would hurt her outside Toronto, and yet she's projected to win a majority government.
So an openly gay, centrist, anti-austerity politician pulled her party out of what, a few months ago, looked like almost certain defeat. Generally speaking, a good night.