Let us celebrate tonight.  Let us scream our heads off in pure unadulterated joy.  For today we have this moment, this feeling of ultimate satisfaction that we have elected someone to break the Bush reigh of terror and lead this country in a new direction.

But what about tomorrow?  What about the days that Bush still has in office?  What will he do to make life difficult for our president-elect?

My roommate told me she was afraid that someone was going to try to shoot him while he was on stage giving his beautiful speech; “Now that he’s off stage he’s safer”, she says.  But what about tomorrow?  Will he have to be constantly protected from the masses of people, racist, bigoted masses who want nothing more than to see him gone and someone safe (to them), old, and white in office again?  What about his daughters, his two little girls and his wife?  Will they be safe?

Will Obama be good to his campaign promises and speeches he’s made across the country about supporting the poor, equal protections for GLBT people (although not marriage, unfortunately), and his commitment to the education of children?  Or will he bow to pressures from the other side in the name of bi-partisan politics and being more centrist?

My hopes for his presidency:

1. He appoints Supreme Court justices (some are due to retire in the next four years) that uphold a woman’s right to choose and maintain that GLBT people are due those rights and privileges straight people have had for years, should cases of that nature come to the court.
2. He does not bow to pressures from conservatives to become more centrist, while still recognizing that he needs to keep as many people as he can happy.  No, I don’t think these are mutually exclusive.
3. He makes sure that his daughters get a good education, because there is nothing more precious in this world than knowledge and with knowledge comes power.
4. He looks back and learns from history, and is not doomed to repeat it.  In other words, that he isn’t swayed to believe that continued or new war is the answer to any question other than what w-a-r spells.
5. He entertains bi-partisan efforts to rebuild and restrengthen our economy, and realizes that we can help the world’s countries strengthen theirs as well.

I know we all have hopes and dreams about this.  My hope is to see a world where I feel safe and secure as both a LGBT person and a young woman.