[Kelly4023]

Just read your post. OK.
As your being a white man, I don't have much faith in you being able to see and understand what I see and understand, and possibly vice versa. Still though I respect your efforts.

Gay people still (sometime) face discrimination, alienation, violence, ect. like Black people still (sometimes)face the same. Just because YOU or your associates won't engage (?) in any of these practices doesn't mean they don't happen. With regularity. True or untrue? Bill should be passed.
I found it interesting that Hon. Clarence Thomas would say what he said: "Blacks should stop believing what they are told to beleive". Perhaps we SHOULD question what our "Black Leaders" tell us, We defintely should question what our "White" leaders tell us, shouldn't we?
We were and are told a number of things blatantly and covertly. It took a lot of radical action to break the bonds of what we were "taught" to believe about ourselves in America. Is it different now?

Lastly, has the Republican party, within the last 50 years, been sympathetic or empathetic toward the Black experience in America? If so, where are the representatives of this embrace? Aside from Mr. Powell, and Ms. Rice, Black republican representation is pretty scarce. I don't care for the democrats, but we do have many elected officials that are domocrats, and all of the votes they recieve aren't from Black people. Republicans have never extended themselves to us, much of their agenda did not include the needs of black people. Now the turn-around. Political ploy or now-they-get-it?
Condi versus Hillary? Condi, close race. She's more believable. Perhaps its her associations!