Back to the Bully Pulpit
After eight years of avoidance by the Bush administration, will Obama or McCain champion gay rights in American foreign policy?
By Ryan Richard Thoreson
From The Advocate November 4, 2008
http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid62881.aspIn 1995, then–first lady Hillary Clinton famously declared that women's rights are human rights at a United Nations conference in Beijing. With more than a decade under our belts since then, the question arises: Will the next president (or first lady) make a similar statement about gay rights on the international stage?
After eight years in which the Bush administration has failed to support gay rights stateside, let alone around the world, the opportunity is there for the next president to use his bully pulpit to champion equality and decry state-sanctioned oppression of gay people. As a superpower and beacon of democracy, human rights activists say, this country should use its influence to lobby against LGBT-related abuses. For starters: working with the 86 United Nations member countries that consider homosexuality a crime, including the seven that punish it by death, to change their minds.
