Two news stories in recent days—both dealing with human rights issues in other countries—emphasize still more compelling reasons why our presidential election this year is of the utmost importance.

In Egypt, as reported in this newspaper this week, gay men and men who are HIV-positive are routinely abused and denied basic civil rights. New York-based Human Rights Watch has issued a report that’s stunning in its accounting of how gay men are hounded by Egyptian authorities, tortured into confessing to trumped-up charges and sentenced to lengthy jail terms simply for being suspected of being gay.

Some of those men are forcibly tested for HIV and held in custody, handcuffed to their beds, if they test HIV-positive. Having HIV is treated as a crime, HRW officials reported.

These accounts are not new, of course. Egypt’s harsh treatment of gay men has been reported widely in the past few years, in this newspaper and in the mainstream press. But the Egyptian government gets little pressure to change its ways from its allies in the Bush administration. And so the abuse goes on.

In another story reported Feb. 11 in the Chicago Tribune, U.S. Olympic officials have told our country’s athletes that they are not free to express disagreement with China’s human rights policies when the Olympics take place in Beijing later this year. If a reporter asks an athlete about a human rights issue in Beijing, the athlete can respond, the rules say, but athletes are not free to initiate comments with reporters on human rights issues while taking part in the Olympics.

That’s just plain wrong. What does the sight of the American flag being raised stand for when a U.S. athlete wins an Olympic medal if not for justice for all and freedom of speech? With the Olympics taking place in a country that routinely jails AIDS activists and severely limits gays’ access to online information, our community has to be concerned when U.S. officials became willing partners in Chinese efforts to curtail criticism and dissent.

Of course, once again, we’re not likely to hear a peep from the Bush administration. For seven years, President Bush has encouraged China’s economic growth and expansion into U.S. markets while registering nothing more than an occasional muffled question about the Chinese government’s atrocious human rights record.

It’s encouraging to hope that we’re on the verge of dramatic change in our government early next year, with either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton leading a new government that moves forward on a long list of GLBT and HIV/AIDS issues that have gone nowhere during the Bush years. It’s wonderful to hear both of them promise to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and to repeal the ban on openly gay soldiers.

But, assuming one of them wins the White House, we must not forget that we can play a role in bringing more freedom to gays in China and Egypt, and in other countries such as Poland and Nigeria. Our president can be a moral force who raises GLBT and other human rights issues when he or she talks with leaders in those countries. Our State Department can let those governments know that their treatment of GLBTs has a bearing on their relationship with the United States.

Now is the time to impress on both Clinton and Obama—and on prospective GOP presidential nominee John McCain—that we consider the treatment of GLBTs in Egypt and China and elsewhere to be an issue for our community here.

Freedom can’t be something we keep to ourselves. It has to be nurtured everywhere, because freedom for others leads to more enduring freedom for all. That’s change we should all support.