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Jennifer Kunkel RAMS Mr. Bibeau Honorable Mention So, as I am sitting here watching the third and final presidential debate, I thought of the perfect way to start my essay. Something that is very important to me personally is the way that gays are treated. You could say that I am completely uninvolved in this and that it doesn't really matter to me, but you would be wrong. I am involved; I am involved because that I believe that it is not right to treat people with so much disdain. There is much discrimination not only against those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, but also against those who support them. Something that I have noticed within the last 2 or 3 years is that in school I have started to hear the phrase "That's so gay" more and more. I don't know if people don't realize that they are discriminating against those who are gay or if they know and don't really care, but what I do know is that it is discriminating and it hurts everyone who hears it. Maybe it doesn't hurt them personally, but every time that somebody says that, it is hurting somebody. I knew a girl last year who considered herself gay. Every day that she went to school she was treated horribly, yet she always stayed herself, and never tried to change herself. She went through so much last year that I am surprised that she could continue coming to school and was able to remain true to herself. She was tripped and pushed in the halls, thrown food at in the cafeteria, and had verbal insults all day long, yet she never gave up. She had the strength that she needed to survive the school year, but I also knew a boy who considered himself gay, and he was just as open. He was discriminated against like you wouldn't believe. He had a more difficult time in dealing with it. At one point during the year, he told me and many other of the kids that did accept him that he was considering suicide. We all tried to stop him and we got him help, but then the school year ended. This year we haven't seen him at all, and there have been many rumors of what happened to him, but whether any of then are true, no one is completely sure. Both of these examples are definitely discrimination, but did you notice how neither of the two went for help from an adult? Maybe they did and I was unaware of it, which could be the case, but then why did it continue to happen? My answer to this question is that they either did not go and speak to anyone about the problem, or the problem wasn't dealt with. The third option would be that the problem was directed and dealt with, but not solved because of some unsupervised areas in the school, or unnoticed discrimination. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable right of all the members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world," This states that no person shall be discriminated against, at all. Not because of any quality trait that someone has that another does not have. This wholly includes sexual orientation. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also states that: "A{f human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." This means everyone has been born equal and free and that you should treat everyone around you as if they were your brother. No matter �� ----------------------------------- - - - ------- ---- -------- � ��