To be fair, among 1st world countries America has been one of the least developed in regards to equality.
Er... What? That's not fair. At all. US States have way more power individually than most provinces and territories in other first world countries do. Judging the entire country by the actions of the worst states is insane, there's 50 of them, of course some of them are going to be backwards. Technically speaking, parts of the US legalized Marijuana before Canada did: Does that make Canada backwards?
Plus, what do you consider equality, exactly? In the US pretty much anyone can go and purchase a firearm, that is an equal right. You have a much harder time doing that in Britain, or France, or even Canada. You can say pretty much anything you want and you won't be arrested, that's an equal right.
Then you have to consider that it's the world's last true superpower.
Every group imaginable on every side is going to be fighting there harder than anywhere else in the world. Religious organizations for example throw millions of dollars into making mega-churches and alternative education courses and summer camps to indoctrinate children and so on. Whatever scale of fight you might imagine here, or anywhere in Europe, is ten times worse and ten times better funded in the United States.
Also consider that, historically speaking, most of the time, whatever social issues trigger throughout the 20th and 21st centuries... Triggered in the US first. Or, at the very least, the US was among the first. Meaning that the rest of the world has time to watch, prepare, and then make a judgement call before it affects them. Just as we're doing now in Canada, preemptively, whilst our government is a stable majority not in the middle of an election. As much as we might look down our noses at the US for their backwards views on the LGBT community, I have two words for you.
Residential Schools. We didn't close the last one until 1992. For perspective: That was the same year
I was born.
We're not better than the US. They're just more honest and more loud mouthed, because that's their culture in a nutshell. Comparing the two in regards to equality is a bit odd, because the concept itself is somewhat nebulous and does not have universal meaning. You can't really break equality down into hard numbers like, say, you can with infant mortality, or the cost of healthcare on the individual family, or stuff like that.
And yes, I am largely playing Devil's Advocate. I'm usually one of the first to roll his eyes at the next stupid thing Florida Man does, but the US is one of our strongest and most socially advanced allies. We just notice their flaws
because they're as important as they are to the rest of the world. If people threw as much attention to the Highway of Tears as they do Transgender issues in the US, Canada would be considered an international travesty.
Oh, wait...
