Sen. David Norris to seek nomination for president of Ireland

Senator David Norris, seemingly the first openly gay man to be elected to a national parliament, has declared that he will be seeking nomination as president of Ireland, for the election to be held in October 2011.

He has to be nominated by 20 members of the Oireachtas (national parliament) or four county councils. There's a lot of momentum behind him now, through a Facebook group, and the odds on him have massively shortened. It's a while away yet before parties will decide who they're nominating, but this should be interesting.

It's a non-political role, the main constitutional function being to refer bills that could be unconstitutional to the supreme court, so it's mainly a symbolic role. Some previous presidents were chosen in part because of symbolic reasons, such as choosing Douglas Hyde in 1938, a Protestant, as the first president, Mary Robinson in 1990, as a woman, and our current president, Mary McAleese in 1997, as someone from Northern Ireland, and they otherwise did a good job.