If Obama wins I might visit the US again

I received a link to this video recently, which gives excerpts from speeches given by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. Now, I’m always keen to have women in political power, so was hopeful Hilary Clinton would be nominated, but after viewing this video, I was pretty impressed with Obama’s support for lesbians and gay people. That was until I heard he’s still one of those who think that marriage is only for hets. How a black person would not know better than to think that ‘separate but equal’ is a legitimate response to discrimination is beyond me.  He does however, seem to oppose employment and housing discrimination, which would be a good start.  I’m thinking, as charitably as I can, that saying openly that you support gays and lesbians, as he’s done in the video, is about as far as an American politician can go without committing political suicide at this point.

I’ve been girlcotting the US and US products as much as possible, given their governments’ abyssmal human rights record regarding us (not to mention their shameful lack of public health care). This is not to say I blame the American people. If we Canadians can’t get rid of anti-equality bigots like the Stephen Harper conservatives and Gordon Campbell’s Liberals, we’ve got no call to criticize the US for taking so long to oust the Bush dynasty. If Obama is elected, I may visit the US again, but I will still think that the US has a lot of maturing to do as a country before they’re up to Canada’s higher human rights standards.