Tribute to Vice President Al Gore

[Jamastiene]

Tonight, I watched An Inconvenient Truth for a third time. While I watched it, I remembered something. I will add that at the end of my tribute to him. For now, I want to point out a few things that seem important to me about Vice President Al Gore.

Vice President Al Gore is a hero to me now, but it hasn't always been that way. If anyone had asked me back in 1988 if I would ever actually like him or Tipper Gore, I would have laughed in their faces. Between his right wing leanings, back then, and Tipper Gore's PMRC, which many of us "teenagers" at the time thought was blatant censorship, I would have laughed anyone, who suggested I would ever like either of them, out of the room and then some.

Something happened between 1988 and 1992 though. Vice President Al Gore began to wake up and see the world in a different light. When his son was almost mortally injured, hit by a car, he was kept alive by machines for a month before he started back breathing on his own. Vice President Al Gore has said many times that was a turning point for him. He began to see the world differently and see what was really important.

Vice President Al Gore might not have really invented the internet, but he coined the term, "information superhighway." He was also one of the key legislators responsible for the internet being available to the public today. He is also responsible for the eventual development of the Mosaic web brower.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_and_Communication_Act_of_1991

He has always tried to wake Congress up to the fact that global warming threatens our planet, and us as well. Today, he is still actively fighting for the survival of our planet and us. And by us, I mean us, including the GLBT community.

While I watched An Inconvenient Truth, I remembered something. Vice President Al Gore "came out" FOR gay marriage just recently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZsVIoOx4Zg

This just cemented him in my mind as a hero. I can only speak for myself, but I still want to say it and make the best tribute I can make to him.

Here's to you, Vice President Al Gore, the man who should have been My President. :toast: