Obama Makes History – Progress in Race Relations – Lesbians and Gays Left Behind

Senator Barack Obama made history last night by being elected the next president of the United States of America. This historic election embraced by African-American inclusion has left gays and lesbians behind. As the world, including the majority of Canadians, celebrate this wonderful step forward for Americans, is the world paying attention to the on-going discrimination against Lesbians and Gays?

The election of a bi-racial Obama who identifies most as an African American man is a history-making step for all American citizens that has excited and moved the issue of race, among, other things forward in the United States. The same cannot be said for Lesbians and Gays who want and deserve the right to have their love sanctioned and legalized with all of the rights, benefits and burdens of heterosexual couples.

Are American Lesbian and Gays now taking up the place, the vacuum of discriminatory limitations based upon their sexual orientation that has been for so long the "place" that African-Americans had been held in or limited by up until now?

In California, Arizona, and Florida propositions were voted on and have affirmed banning same-sex marriage. In Arkansas a proposition passed that bans Same-Sex adoption.

While African-Americans celebrate the smashing of a previously held type of a glass-ceiling, American Lesbian and Gays are still being discriminated against in ways that are being approved of by the status-quo.

Isn't change that is good for one previously held down and discriminated group good for any other discriminated against group as well?

The politics of America are undergoing a long-awaited for and hoped for change. Meanwhile, the politics of sexual orientation – The Fundamentalist Christian Right against Lesbians and Gays continues to get away with outright discrimination. With all the change afoot in America, wonderful, promising, and inspirational and long-overdue change there is another chapter still to be written. The chapter of inclusiveness that still awaits Lesbians and Gays.

Here in Canada, Lesbians and Gays can marry and have the full extent of those laws. They can also adopt children. Canada does not have the same race issues or history of wounds between races that the United States does.

The question, however, is how can America make so much progress in one area, race relations and electing their first ever African-American president and continue to allow such discrimination against one group of its citizens – Lesbians and Gays?