I am officially broadsided

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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ ... _lgbt.html

Huh???

Before I heard of this, I thought, "I'm not even going to raise the issue. It's never going to happen."

Having it so suddenly come up, at this delicate era in the history of lgbt rights, I'm thinking, "Woah." Not in the sense that I think it's a bad idea, but more in the sense of falling off my chair and being a little dazed for a minute. How are they going to approach this? Do they have a realistic idea of how they're going to make it work?

I mean, yeah, I've always seen it backwards that we have something going on that makes the holocaust look like a beer hangover, yet nobody seems fazed by it. We have countries where this is going on, and we're sending them money? Huh? Yeah, I think the status quo as it has been is a giant source of cynicism for me about the overall worth of the human race and the deservingness of the average person to live.

But this sudden maneuver just made me go, "Jeez." I mean, give me a break, people. My poor heart can't take but so much. You people are going to be the death of me.

You appear dazed. What are you getting at?

That this news, in the article linked above, has put me somewhat at sixes and sevens. Our government actually making it an important part of their foreign policy to take into consideration how another country is treating its lgbt population is a virtual paradigm shift and arguably the biggest thing to happen in lgbt rights in decades. Gay marriage is by comparison a virtual frivolity, almost a joke: yeah, it's an improvement, but it's one that takes almost no actual effort and doesn't offer much of substance by comparison to improve anyone's quality of life. To suddenly go from less than half of the population saying they'd support the idea of a relatively half-hearted, and quite frankly half-assed, improvement in their attitude toward gay people's rights (gay marriage) to an American President saying that the human rights of gay people is part of his foreign policy is the most substantial change in lgbt rights in my lifetime, even if nothing really comes of it just yet.

Well, just wait until the Repugnicans take over.

Its a bit puzzling to me too.

Im all for gay rights, and even gay marriage.

But we cant even get our own country to get behind gay marriage, and can barely get behind tolerating gays in the military or in other parts of society, and now we have to preach to other countries about the issue.

Its a little ahead of the curve of whats possible.

Its hard enough to get some places, including countries like Afganistan in which we are trying to win hearts and minds, to treat straight women descently.

I think we should stick to worrying about the status of the straight female fifty percent of their population for a long time before we start making an issue out of how primitive places treat the five percent who are gay/transgender et al.

If everyone in the current congress was told that they shouldn't expect a reelection because the house was being cleaned, would LGBT rights be passed since the fear of not getting reelected is gone?

You're going to give Ragtime a heart attack, this is not humane

Bear in mind that the President has very little power to effect policy change domestically, and can act with far more latitude in foreign policy. So if a President is going to do something positive in the area of LGBT rights, this is the arena where he has the greatest scope to do it.