When Latvia’s foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, declared on Twitter on Thursday that he was “proud to be gay,” the announcement was welcomed there by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activists, who have faced open hostility from social conservatives in the former Soviet republic.

In neighboring countries, contrasting reactions to the minister’s declaration — and his statement, in Latvian, that he would also work for legal recognition for same-sex couples — seemed to reveal the contours of a cultural fault line on the issue in post-Cold War Europe between West and East. Read More