Harvey Milk Persuasive Speech

If the United States Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” then why is it that two people of the same gender identity were not able to get married until 2015 even though they were created equally to one man and one woman? Until June 26, 2015, gay marriage was not legal in the United States of America, until December 7, 2017, gay marriage was not legal in Australia, while in many other countries today, such as Russia and China, homosexual acts are legal, but gay marriage is not recognized. This becomes more drastic in countries like Saudi Arabia where homosexual acts are illegal and punishable by death if caught (Bearak and Cameron, 1). It is because of these drastic differences of recognition and punishments in

To put his foot in the door against these public issues, he ran for a supervisor position in San Francisco, and after many failed attempts, he won. He believed that gay marriage should be legal and not looked upon any differently than two heterosexual people getting married. On this speech given 25 June, 1978, Harvey creates an appeal to logos (logic) through the use of repetition to implant in his audience’s minds to come out, in other words, to inspire those who have been oppressed by their sexual orientation or gender identity. Through the use of organization and metaphor, Milk creates an appeal to pathos (emotion), to diminish the counter arguments on how gay marriage equality would be detrimental to society and therefore unifies his audience of those who have been discriminated against by sexual preference or identity as a family. This will hopefully inspire those in his audience to come

It must anger an audience member when shown that just because of their orientation, person A and B may have a legally allowed life together, while they and their loved one cannot based off of something that is not a choice. Even recent presidential candidate Hillary Clinton states that “being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality. And protecting the human rights of all people, gay or straight, is not something that only Western governments do” (Clinton, 1) where it should be equal everywhere, being able to love who we want to love, but we as a country should model it in an effort for others in other parts of the world to follow in our steps. In his speech, Harvey Milk directly calls out his opponents on his stance and states that “No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words from the Declaration of Independence. No matter how hard you try, you can never chip those words from the base of the Statue of Liberty” (Milk, 1) which also further uses repetition of “no matter how hard you try” (Milk, 1) to create a sense of pathos for the audience that despite the opponents attempt to stop the legalization of