Don’t get me wrong she’s no Sarah Palin or anything but she really irked me in a recent interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, which can be viewed here. Ms. Clinton talks about how wonderful America is in respect to marriage equality because in ”America, where we recognize the right that every single person has to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and over the years so many of the barriers that prevented people from getting married – crossing lines of faith or color or ethnicity – have just disappeared.”

Really Ms. Clinton? REALLY?

Now before I tear Hillary a new one on this Andrea Mitchell certainly can’t get away unscathed. It is extremely poor journalism on her part to not have furthered Clinton’s statement up with a question about same-sex couples not having the right to even have a civil union recognized by the governement of the United States. Same-sex couples still don’t have the power to makes medical decisions on behalf of their partner for crying out loud. Most journalists for highschool papers would have had the sense to make that a follow-up question the fact Andrea Mitchell just lets it slide it beyond amateur (I hope she gets suspended or assigned to cover paint drying on Antarctica to be perfectly honest).

Now back to Clinton. Either she was incredibly stupid here - because a) she forgot that not all American’s are afforded the right to the persuit of happiness despite it being written into the constitution or b) for somehow thinking that most Americans would see this as subtle support/push for same-sex marriage (I highly doubt any more than 10% of the populace would have seen it as such). OR she made the statement with no respect for the Queer community at all and was basically being an asshole - which I honestly find hard to believe.

What bother’s me here though isn’t the fact that it is somewhat of a slap in the face to the Queer community who see her as such an ally, it’s the fact that she actually makes the U.S. appear to be some sort of champion of marriage equality - like it is the only country in the world that allows for inter-faith and inter-racial marriages - when in reality (welcome to it Ms. Clinton) MANY other countries do and many of those countries actually go further than the U.S. and recognize same-sex marriages or same-sex civil unions (U.S.A has yet to recognize this nationally). Just to remind Ms. Clinton of how far behind the United States actually is in comparison to other Western countries instead of naming all of the ones that recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions I’ll just name the ones that don’t - The USA, Australia, Japan, and Italy. All other Western countires do (8 Western countries recognize Same-sex marriages nationally).

Now here’s a list of non-western countries that are superior to the United States when it comes to marriage equality (we’ll start with marriages and then civil unions)

Marriage: South Africa, Argentina, Nepal (expected to pass by the end of the year), Mexico (recognizes foreign same-sex marriages), and Israel (recognizes foreign same-sex marriages and has same-sex civil unions)

Civil Unions: Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna.

I expect that in the future Ms. Clinton won’t be so quick to tout how amazing the the U.S. is when it comes to marriages and will learn that there’s subtle and then there’s putting in a message so deeply hidden you might as well need a decoder to find it.