Sexual orientation has been and to some degree is still seen as a taboo topic. For many years it has been argued that sexual orientation is based on one's gender and one's sexual preference, should be based on one's sex (i.e. females should be attracted to males and males to females). For gener...

Issues/Strengths/Challenges What does it mean to be gay? "I never had any real attraction towards women, but I really knew that I was gay when puberty began. I felt an attraction toward the other boys and I was curious to find out what they were like." P.J. Smith (Personal communication, November 2...

Paedophilia has risen to epidemic proportions in Australia. Although there is no hard empirical evidence, the enormous surge of recent attention on the abuse of children by priests suggests that there is an even bigger endemic in the Australian church. The psychological damage to victims of child se...

I. Introduction A gay man remembers his high school years filled with loneliness, fear, and self-hatred. Another man recalls spending every lunch period in a bathroom stall. A lesbian recollects her bottling up all her emotions and silencing all impulsive gestures, terrified of saying or doing a...

Sex and the Catholic Church It has been said that the two most powerful drives in a human, besides the practical need for food and shelter, are sex and religion. The sexual urge is strong in nearly everyone, as advertisers of everything from chocolates to cars can tell you, and the urge to worshi...

Gay rights have been a very controversial issue in the past fifty years. The oppression of homosexuals has been an expanding focus in our media and society. After reaching a satisfactory level of equality within gay rights after the Equal Rights Act of 1973, the opportunity of gay marriages is the n...

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey and is one of the biggest names in Blues history. She was extremely talented and touched on many issues through her songs, including alcohol, death, abandonment, erotica, injustice, love, murder, poverty, sex and homosexuality. Through this paper I hope to take a loo...

The topic of gender is relevant to everyone. It is also a topic that evokes a strong emotional response. Gender is a social construct and few of us are aware of the system of rewards and punishments that have shaped our gender identity. For others who this system did not 'succeed' are...

Hate Crimes In America Did you know that people with blonde hair have low I.Q.s? Or that people less than five feet tall are more likely to spread a disease? How about that people with brown eyes are really worshipers of Satan? That did not sound very logical, did it? No,...

RACISM We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The Declaration of Independence The legal barriers to racial equality have signi...