"Plusieurs membres du gouvernement sont homosexuels."
Translation:Several members of the government are gay.
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2137
I think the question is does the French phrase ¨membres du gouvernement¨ imply they are elected to government? I believe ¨members of government¨ is used for elected people in government in British English and also in many other countries, but it is not a typical phrasing used in the USA.
1054
Fifteen comments, but only five show up. Not sure what's up there.
Anyway, is there really not a shorter term in French than "homosexuel"? Seems needlessly long.
1138
On the grounds that a mixture is more likely, French, as with a number of other European languages - including English - defaults to the masculine. It would have to be a known fact that all of whatever noun which is in a given sentence is populated by females for the feminine plural to be accepted. There is a lesson early on which explains this.
For those wondering about what I mean by English as we don't have gendered nouns as a rule, think of actors - if we talk about all of the people in a play, unless they were all women, we'd automatically default to saying "all the actors were great". Also words like "chairman" don't actually mean a man who is directing events, "man" in this instance means "human".
Language has far more rarely been deliberately sexist than people think. "Man" means two different things depending on context (as in "mankind"). Don't take this to mean that I particularly support this, I'm just stating facts.