In 2003, we gay and lesbian people watching the State of the Union address heard the President of the United States call for an amendment to the Constitution that would permanently define marriage as between a man and a woman. The President of the United States was framing it in terms of reining in "activist judges" but the intent (unless you were tragically clueless) was this: to enshrine, permanently, bigotry between a group of Americans into the Constitution of the United States. Never before, in the history of this country, was an amendment proposed that would TAKE AWAY the rights of law abiding Americans. I was white hot with anger that night watching that. It was one of the shameful moments ever in a State of the Union address. Apparently, full equality was a serious problem enough to amend the Constitution.

The current occupant of the White House has been nothing less than public enemy #1 of the GLBT community. From peddling shameful consitutional amendments to putting in homophobic judges in the Federal judiciary to appointing homophobes in the administration to threatening to veto any kind of legislation that would confer equal rights to GLBT people...George W. Bush has been consistently opposed to GLBT equality.

And that's why it's important, to me, that the next President (and yes, I absolutely think it will be a Democrat) "gets it" as far as GLBT issues are concerned. When ENDA (a fully inclusive ENDA) is introduced in the next Democratic Congress, I want the President to actively lobby for it and to sign it. When Don't Ask Don't Tell is up for review, I want the President to strongly take on the Pentagon and to be committed to its repeal, so that gay and lesbian soldiers can serve their country openly. When the next Congress passes a federal hate crimes bill, I want the President to lobby for its passage.

I want the next President to begin respecting us. To stop treating us as second class citizens. I've had 7 years of that and enough's enough.