The Importance Of Gay Rights In America

Many people from the United States hold the belief that being gay is something that has always been considered to be okay. They believe that it is just a given. Despite people’s current beliefs on the subject, for a very long time, it was something that was widely believed to be taboo. In the past, people were imprisoned due to their sexuality. Regardless, throughout the decades, people have pushed for the widespread acceptance of people who are part of the LGBT community. Today, homophobia still exists in some parts of the United States, but we have come a long way since the early 1900s.

LGBT* activists face a crossroads in policy framing: are LGBT* rights human rights, or sexual rights? Scholars argue that neither are necessarily successful in expansion (Mertus 2007). Arguing LGBT* rights as human rights is problematic because the framing relies on sexual identity categories. Mertus argues that this framing method lacks “reflecting the self-critique of identity within LGBT communities that reveals LGBT categories as socially constructed and contested,” which is an issue because it is based on cultural understandings and conflicts with previously existing identities (2007). Arguing LGBT* rights as sexual rights is an improvement, but not by much. Framing sexual rights as human rights instead of LGBT* rights as human rights is argued as more successful, but still difficult (Mertus 2007). Mertus suggests this is because using the “s-term is frightening to international human rights organizations and LGBT activists alike, conjuring up images of taboo sex practices” (2007). This battle with framing LGBT* rights is just one example of the difficulty in policy implementation. There are many obstacles to policy, including state ignorance, inaction, and policy diffusion.

There is humanly no possible way to merely or easily define what “freedom” truthfully is, as every distinct person and each social order has opposing restrictions for what this belief is. Bureaucrats and social researchers, for example, have vastly diverse philosophies of what institutes freedom. This primeval belief has been ingrained into mankind since the beginning of time. Century after century mankind has fought in numerous wars for this concept of “Freedom”.

Freedom, is one of the greatest things on Earth yet only a few people experience it. Webster’s Dictionary defines freedom as: “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” Around the world, people will live their whole lives without being completely free. I am fortunate enough to live in a country that is free. I am very thankful that I live in America, because having freedom is what makes this country great.

Freedom is defined in many different ways: The state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint;Political or national independence; Personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery.(Dictionary)

Unfortunately, not every LGBT Teen knows that hope is always available. But there can be change and there will be change. James Baldwin said, "Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality." Being gay or transgendered isn't a choice, but teaching your children

Some parents, do not wish for a homosexual child. These types of people believe in tradition, tradition, being used as a loose word, as a “correct” term for normality. “Traditional” mothers would like to see their baby girls in a white dress, while “traditional” fathers want to walk them down the aisle. These mothers want to see their sons with a woman like themselves and the fathers want their sons to “be a man.” Although these are possibilities for homosexual couples, there are many people to deem it as abnormal. To some just the idea of their kid being gay is monstrous. They find it repulsing and if their kids do turn out gay they push them aside.

Teachers and parents express how important it is to be yourself and to be unique, but when they hear their child is gay, they get mad that the child is expressing themselves. In a blog about coming out, a 15 year old male wrote, “When I came out to my mom last night with my dad it wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for. She didn’t seem to happy about it and she kept questioning why I had these “feelings”. You could say the same thing for straight people and then she got all defensive and said that my feelings weren’t normal. She said she loved me, but I didn’t feel love” (When I…). His parents got mad because their child isn’t “normal.” This is where we all need to focus our attention to. We need to stop making gay sound like a horrible disease. It is just as normal as anything else. America, as a whole, needs to learn to be more accepting rather than judgmental. However, this may take a lot of work because I have never seen a more unreasonably critical group of

Homosexuality plays a big part in Sexual Prejudice in the United States today. According to Herek 2002, “Survey participants generally were more likely to regard gay men as mentally ill, supported adoption rights for lesbians more than for gay men, and had more negative personal reactions to gay men than to lesbians”. People in the present US society, mostly label gay men as completely wrong and are more favorable for lesbian

The New world was of great wonders discovered by the Vikings, inhabited by the natives ,and stolen by a bitter elite, that punches the great world with an iron fist; the explorer, Columbus starting the brick of colonization, an open path for Europeans to take the land and call it their own to grasp a new life, a dream that is to be savored and fulfilled as growth and prosperity continues to emerges out of the westernmost winds, and south of the Mediterranean sea, dominating the land, free to do whatever they please.

Acceptance of the Homosexual Lifestyle: An Evaluation and Comparison between the United States and Other Locations

As a gay male I have an insight to this fight and the a connection to a community that has been oppressed, looked down on, fought prejudice and hate crimes and continues to fight ignorance and injustice on a daily basis. Children that are gay continue to go through the same shame and anguish that GLBT youth have gone through in the past. They are bullied and beaten by their classmates, neighbors and even their own families.

Approximately four weeks ago, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history occurred not to far from UCF. Patrons of Pulse nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando where massacred by Omar Mateen, Mateen took the lives of forty-nine individuals all because of their presence in a gay establishment. This tragic incident wasn’t the first attack on the LGBT community, but it’s massive fatalities put Congress under even more pressure to reform gun laws, gay rights, and suspected terrorist legislation. As a political Science major, I take a special interest in the reactions among legislators after the Orlando incident and believe there should be more equal protection for gay people under the law. The two articles I will be analyzing, After Orlando, a Political Divide on Gay Rights Still Stands and Gay rights and wrongs: How the Orlando massacre affects the fight for LGBT rights furthers the discourse among the divide in Congress over gay rights.

Freedom has a large range of meaning. The encyclopedia Britannica defines freedom as “the quality or state of being free, and the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action” (Britannica). In the American society there is a lot of emphasis on freedom, and the right to be free, but one must question to what extent we are truly “free”.

The survey also shows that Americans remain deeply divided over the essential cause and nature of homosexuality. A 42% plurality believes that being a homosexual "is just the way that some people prefer to live," no change from a Los Angeles Times survey conducted in 1985. But there has been a rise in the percentage who say homosexuality is "something that people are born with" ­ from 20% in the Times survey to 30% currently. The public also is split on the question of whether a gay person 's sexual orientation can be changed ­ 42% say it can, the same number disagrees.