Homosexuality and Society
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Homosexuals have long been ostracized in society. Up until a few years ago, a lot of them had to live in the “closet” because of fear of retaliation and of discrimination. Today there are many of them that are living openly, however, there is still some sort social stigma that is attached to them. There is a growing debate about the rights of gays, lesbians and transgendered and it seems to be working in their favor. Many states are starting to approve homosexual marriages, but there are still a lot of people that are opposed to it. This particular topic is a major debate in today’s media because there are many people that are closed mind and old fashioned, that they are not totally open to the idea.
There are a lot of homosexuals in our mainstream media. For example, Ellen De Generes and Wanda Sykes are a couple of celebrities that are open about their lesbian marriages. The biggest problem they are facing is that there are still a lot of conservatives against them. In the past few years, tolerance for homosexuals has increased and in some cultures it is openly practiced. The problem is that there are still a lot of people that feel that they are violating some sacred right that is supposedly awarded to a lot of people. Organizations like GLAD are making it a lot easier for homosexuals to have some sense of a support structure and it also helps in fighting for rights, such as having the freedom to express themselves and of discrimination.
If you ask someone that is coming from A liberal upbringing, they say that homosexuals are humans too and that they need to be awarded the same rights that heterosexuals are awarded by the mere fact that they were born. One way of making them feel like the are like any other human being is tolerance. Tolerance is needed so homosexuals can be given the same rights that are given to heterosexuals. This includes marriage. Homosexual marriages should legalized because everyone is free to love who they want to love.
The Fall of the Newspaper: What it Means for Society
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The evolution of America’s newspaper press has seen good days and bad. It’s seen the rise of “Yellow Journalism,” in which sensationalism and tabloid headlines screamed of half-truths. It’s seen the much more respectable era of the Pentagon Papers and the investigative reporting that led to the unraveling of the Watergate scandal. To this day, politicians and leaders in the corporate world know their greatest watchdog is the nation’s media. And yet, the silent death of newspapers is imminent. It’s been a tough several years for the nation’s newspapers, both large and small. Furloughs, layoffs, and major reductions of staff have changed the face of the nation’s mainstream press. The main reason is a loss of subscriptions, due primarily to the Internet. The younger generation, for the most part, does not see the point in purchasing a hard copy of the newspaper when most papers publish a good portion of their content online. Old-timers lament the imminent loss of sitting down with a cup of coffee over the daily news. This loss of revenue has led to the shutting down of entire departments in some papers; in others, the pages have been reduced. Hardly a newspaper in the nation has the means to pay for investigative reporters anymore, because they require doing so much work “in the trenches” before ever producing a single story. What this means is a loss of one of America’s, and democracy’s, dearest friends: the newspaper. Other, more specific, publications have and will continue to pop up in their place. But the newspaper always had its eye on the community it served. When its pages are cut, and its staff are reduced, it cannot report on as wide a scope as it once did. For the larger newspaper, this means it cannot be as much of a watchdog as it once was.
