It's cooler in Canada.

Last year Sarah Rose Werner was so fed up with the way GLBT Americans were being treated that she renounced her U.S. citizenship.

She moved to St. John, Canada, from Portland, Maine, in 1998 and received her Canadian citizenship in 2001. The longer she lived outside America, the stranger it seemed to her as a place for gay men and lesbians to live, says the self-employed Werner. "I've never had a problem [in Canada] with people dealing with me as an individual. The center of the political spectrum in Canada is far to the left of the U.S."

While most GLBT Americans won't be ripping up their U.S. citizenship papers, there is evidence they would feel more welcome as gay people up north. Most Canadians now live in jurisdictions with equal marriage rights after a provincial court in November made Saskatchewan the seventh region to include same-sex couples in the definition of marriage, according to the national gay advocacy group Egale. Toronto and Montreal, with their huge pride festivals, are gay vacation destinations. Even gay Europeans notice the difference between Canada and America: In a survey of 636 attendees at 2004's EuroGames in Munich, more than half said they plan to attend the first World Outgames in Montreal in 2006; only 7% said they'll attend Chicago's Gay Games.

Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell, whose January 2001 double marriage ceremony in Toronto with Anne and Elaine Vautour was among the first legal gay and lesbian marriages in Canada, agree with Werner's assessment. "The religious right has a far more active support base in the United States than here in Canada," Varnell says. "In Canada, we have incrementally made social and economic gains for our relationships based on the fundamental declaration made in 1995 that we are equal as persons."

Glen Murray, who in October 1998 became the first openly gay man to be elected mayor of a large North American city--Winnipeg--agrees. He points to the fact that at least 50 fellow openly gay and lesbian Canadians have been elected to everything from school boards and city councils to provincial legislatures and the federal house of commons. "Canada is way ahead of the United States" in terms of gay rights, he says.