Amnesty International Monologue

I could hear nothing but the thud of my own heartbeat. He punched the wall again making it shudder. I stood there frozen, sweat collecting heavily on my palms as he drunkenly staggered toward me. I couldn 't bring myself to move. I saw disappointment and even disgust entrenched in his eyes. He grabbed me and declared "I don 't have a gay son." I blurted "I’m gay" and immediately felt a jolt of force. I slammed into the wall behind me and all the air was forced out of my body. I couldn 't make out the continual slurs coming from his mouth. My ears rang as the wind was indiscriminately knocked out of me again and again. I hobbled upstairs through the tears clouding my sight in an attempt to run away from what I was. I sat in my room, cold and hurt. I couldn 't look in the mirror. It wasn 't just my father; my friends at school stopped talking to me, taunting me with derogatory words and joking about the prospect of my suicide. At first I ignored it, but the invective perpetuated itself in my mind. My life had become a constant slew of criticisms simply because

I involved myself with groups like the ACLU and Amnesty International. As a result of this involvement I gained the courage to confront my own situation and the momentum to help others. My participation in events advocating marriage equality, voting rights, and human rights allowed me to discover a passion for helping people. I made it a goal to do everything in my power to help prevent abusive situations like the one that happened to me. This abusive upbringing markedly shaped my academic pursuits, coercing me to quest a major in International Relations. The program at UT is specifically and especially conducive toward my goal. Since the make-up of the International Relations program at the university enlists a "Global Studies" component, I am afforded the opportunity to focus on the social aspects of the world more. This focus has allowed me to branch out into the realms of human rights and