On the day of July 16th, 1942 , a horrible event took place. The Vel’d’Hiv Roundup. 4,500 French policemen arrested over 11,000 Jews. Within the short time frame of a week 13,000 Jews had were being held in the Vel’d’Hiv , the winter stadium , more then 4,000 children were with them. Children two years to sixteen years of age were arrested alongside their parent or guardian.
American political activist, author, and artist, Mary fisher, in her speech “A Whisper of AIDs,” presents the growing national epidemic known as HIV and AIDs, from a personal and national point of urgency, condemning the silence surrounding these viruses and calling all peoples to action in the fight against HIV and AIDs. Fisher first comes to her audience through emotion, establishing ethos from the moment she began speaking, connecting herself to the HIV community by stating that she is HIV positive, and like many of those listening to her that tonight she did not choose to be apart of the millions of infected. She presents evidence and logic against the idea that HIV and AIDs present bias against any one group of people by quoting the
“A group of people decided they’d had enough. They took a stand and in doing so began the New York Gay Activist movement. Which eventually spread to other parts of the country…. I very much doubt they know the impact of their decision to stand firm that day in 1969, but it’s because of those people that gay rights exist in this country today,” Lynley Wayne, LGBT Writer. Everyday people are trying to stand up for themselves.
Marsha P. Johnson was a Black actress, drag queen, sex worker, and trans woman who lived from June 27, 1944 to July 6, 1992 (Born; Parker; Pay It No Mind). She is best remembered for being at the center of the 1969 Stonewall Riots (Tungol). In fact, some claim that she started these riots on June 28, 1969 after racist and homophobic police officers raided The Stonewall Inn, a known gay club in New York City’s Greenwich Village (Born; Gossett). Additionally, with the support of Sylvia Rivera, who she was mentoring at the time, she founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970, which provided a safe space for homeless transgender teens and drag queens and advocated for the inclusion of transgender rights in the gay rights
Collective injustice needed someone to oppose against
The theme of the science fiction teleplay “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” by Rod Serling is fear. The teleplay “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” also reveals that when people are afraid they tend to act irrationally. For instance after Charlie shoots Pete Van Horn everybody starts to blame him, call him the monster, and so he runs away before anything could get worse and because he does so they start to chase him. “A man breaks away from the crowd to chase Charlie.
A brochure for “Reminder Day” expressed that homosexuals were often not treated as equals and that the Federal, state and local governments have shown bias towards these individuals. Although some religions would perceive homosexuality as a sin, the individuals are still human and should be given the same opportunities as the rest of the population. In the past, the Declaration of Independence promised natural rights for all men, but some rights were not realized for minority groups. Over time, parts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were revoked and amended so that in today’s world, all “men”, including women and minority groups, all have the same rights.
When no influence is strong enough to unify people, they divide. They struggle” (91). During times of instability, the “influence” that once brought people together is long forgotten, people only look out for themselves. This stimulates the division of like people and as a result, the community struggles. She examines every person around her to make sense of her thoughts and values and to find her place in the world.
At the turn of the 19th century, the rates for pregnancy out of wedlock rose dramatically, along with the decline of social and sexual control over the younger generation. Born in 1820, Rogers may have already been another statistic to the rising sexual culture. The women she referred to as mother, may in fact have been her grandmother. New York was the city in which she and her sixty-two-year-old mother ran a boarding house until her death. New York had become a prime example of the dangers of cultural practices that called for change in the mid-1800s.
Civil Rights Movement: African-American and LGBT Although the African-American civil rights movements have been going on since the early 1600’s, it shares some differences and similarities to the LGBT civil rights movement that started in the early 1940’s. Growing up in a very conservative area, some topics are not acknowledged as being real. Struggling to be heard, struggling to be seen, the LGBT civil rights pleads to be mentioned anywhere.
In the reading by Peter Redman, he raises the argument that the ‘AIDS carrier” becomes the central representation of the HIV epidemic and how the representations of HIV cannot be narrowed down to one cause. In addition, the ‘AIDS carrier’ is represented as monster and the carrier spreads HIV from the deviant subpopulations to the mainstream. Also, AIDS has been connected to social and moral issues and singles out groups like gay men, black people, and young single women. These groups are then viewed as diseased subpopulations and that causes others to feel disgust and panic. The heterosexual men are then afraid to have physical or emotional contact with men in general and that’s why boundaries of heterosexual masculinity were produced.
The Treatment of Homosexuality Before the Second World War many gay and lesbian individuals didn't vocalize their sexuality because it was condemned by much of the population. After the World Wars Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people began to gain a foothold in social equality. Since the 1950s the treatment of homosexuality in the United States has opened itself to debate politically, assimilate socially, and increased awareness of the new interpretation of religion in the context of homosexuality. LGBT political issues amid the years of 1950s to 1970s were primarily centered around social perspectives deciding on the oppression of gay individuals. Before the end of the 1970s, with the development of gay rights, more consideration
THE STONEWALL RIOTS The Stonewall riots are widely believed to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States. Considered by some to be the "Rosa Parks" moment of the gay rights movement in America, the riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York, in the early hours of June 28th, 1969. This single event has left a resounding impact on the fight for LGBT rights that can still be seen today. Throughout the 50s and 60s in the United States, the FBI along with local police departments kept close watch on what they believed to be "homosexual activity".
The feminist movement and the gay rights movement are two communities that have been fighting for their rights for a long time and are similar in many ways, yet different in many others. While they are both social movements, the feminist movement’s main focus is on women’s rights, while the gay rights movement’s main focus is on gay rights. Similar to each other or not, the two movements could (and do) benefit from each other. Both women and gay people have faced discrimination due to being seen as lesser in the eyes of society. However, the reasons for this discrimination they face/have faced are very different.
In 2015, the Obergefell v. Hodges case ended the “state bans on same-sex marriage”, therefore legalizing same-sex marriage (Important Supreme Court Cases). Now, “same-sex couples can now receive the benefits...of marriage that were largely exclusive to heterosexual couples” (Koch). The ruling has led to the modern fight for gay civil rights. Exposure to the LGBTQ+ community, the southern “Bathroom Bills”, and other fights for transgender rights, and the press for more LGBTQ+ representation in the media has erupted from this case. Both rulings had very big impacts on their respective communities.
