What's up fellow members of EC! Due to my government teacher's desire to load are busy schedules with senseless busy work, I have the assignment to write a 10 page essay about ANYTHING concerning government and politics, and well, since gay rights is the ONLY thing about politics that I could even write ONE page about, that's what I chose to do. My hand written rough draft is about two pages front and back so far, but really I just kinda wanna know you guys' opinions on what I should address in it.. It's kinda hard to get 10 pages. So far, I've talked about the origins of the gay rights movement with the stonewall riots, I talked about DOMA and how separation of church and state and the first amendment pretty much should throw that out, and I plan on talking about discrimination and talk about how it's unconstitutional for the government to divide lgbt's into a second-class unit of society. You guys know anything else I could squeeze into here in case the above doesn't yield me 10 pages?
That isn't exactly gay-rights related. If you do touch on it, don't focus on it too much for fear of going off-topic. Otherwise, it may be beneficial to compare LGBT rights to gay rights. Additionally, rights in other countries vs. rights in the U.S.
You could add something about Harvey Milk. He was a huge gay rights activist in California, and played a role in the government. I did a speech about him last year, and I ended up having to cut it short.
There was that one british author I can't remember the name of that advocated homosexuality and ended up being in prison and dying for it basically. He has been in the news recently I believe.
Heh yeah I kinda already detoured a little off topic about that and had to take a few steps back. Thanks for the advice so far guys. I DO like the idea of comparing gay rights of other countries to OUR country, but i think our rights are even WORSE in other countries 0_0 well, at least "less-developed" ones. I know Canada as a whole allows gay marriage, while in some parts of africa, they allow gay murder, so we'll see. I'll post my rough draft up here when I'm done if you guys wanna take a peek?
I know right! But my teacher is just.... GUH! She wants us to suffer really, but whatever. I guess since the final draft has to be typed? But that's how it is... And 9 and a half pages won't cut it either. So I really got to work at it V_V"
show how the christian based morality of western society has been harmful LGBT people & the problems that occur when a society [& therefore the politics & views of that society] are based upon one single [oppressive] viewpoint [obvi christianity isn't always anti-LGBT but you get my point]
you can mention Alan Turing, that gay british computer scientist who i THINK started all of the algorithms for computers? he was pivotal in WWII though. he was forced to take some kind of hormone..iirc.. it's been awhile.
Wow, that word kinda caught me unprepared. But you are right, unfortunately.. You can talk about how homophobic society affects its gay members and how that influences their lives and contributions to the society at large. You can expand this across many cases of unfortunately destroyed lives of people who were nothing short of geniuses and gifts to humanity. That can easily be expanded to the status quo today, with openly gay people in countries which are friendlier vs. those which are not and so on. Basically, you can write really a lot if you switch from global to individual standpoint and vice versa. Make a conclusion on how one and the other outcome could influence your country and you more or less have it all. And in the end, if you don't mind, if there's no problems with anonymity and so on, let us read the essay
You can talk about how many of the so called "Founding Fathers" we're gay. All speculation but there are theories about it.
You got it, I'll be happy to let you guys read it. I finished the rough draft which she wantded hand written and only got 7 out of 10 pages v_v" But when I type the final draft, I'll certainly expand on a lot of those kinds of things. I did include how homophobia and discrimination affects lgbt citizens. Unfortunately, the further I got into the essay, the more dogmatic and slightly-off topic and, well, shitty I got with it. Heh heh heh, I've made a habit of completely bs-ing everything for this teacher because we've had more than a fair share of assignments that she asn't even LOOKED at and just put a grade on it (you know this when you turn in a five page packet with only the first two pages done and you STILL get a 100...) So don't judge me too badly on it when I upload it, it truly isn't my finest work
Try including issues with homophobia. Another important thing is the legalization of same sex marriage.
When I helping people write long essays, the problem is usually caused by a lot of "stringing" the text along. They go from this,to this, to that, back to this and its really all over the place. Paragraphs are not meant to cause pauses in text, they are meant to seperate topics. A good way to divide up paragraphs and topics in essays is Historical, Moral, Modern. Historical is historical references. Moral are essentially all your opinions and the 'morals' of your essay. Modern is modern references. -Religion. ~The Historical is the key factor religion played in the creation of laws in the western world. Religion was even a driving factor in the moral justification of slavery. The effect on gay rights before and after the seperation of church and state. Etc. ~Moral... Should religion have a hand or say in gay right? (Obviously not, but explain) ~Modern... The role religion has played to combat gay rights in the modern world. Modern incidents.... Thats already three lengthy paragraphs. Could easily be a page and a half to two on that topic alone. Writing essays is all about strategy. Plot out and limit yourself to only covering a certain amount of information or topics per paragraph/s. Many people find themselves speeding through everything they were going to talk about in the begining. For instance, like my example, if you have a Historical, Moral, AND Modern point in one paragraph than you havent explained your points well enough.
If you managed to get all of that into 4 pages then well done - that's a lot of area covered, and you might want to expand on those initial topics more, get another page or two out of it. Gen's advice is very good for essay writing. As far as gay rights, I would perhaps even raise a balanced argument on the topic of more conservative Americans vs pro-LGBT, such as their claims of traditional values, Christianity (and the church's influence on LGBT in the past - while the church has its merits, it's certainly halted the world's development in some areas), and any other factors you can think of. Also, you might want to talk about those in other countries, such as Africa, who are campaigning to bring back the death penalty for LGBT people. In Uganda, the government even arrested a UK citizen twice and had him deported because he was there to write a play about the condition of gay people in Africa. The situation is pretty bad.
