John Andrade 10/24/11 WR 13300 Research Paper Exploratory Draft In this paper I plan to argue that American society

as a whole is changing. More specifically, I aim to discuss that American society is starting to become much more accepting towards the LGBT community than it ever has been. I would like to explain that while we still have a long way to go, our society is much more attentive towards a minority that had been hidden for much of human history. I decided to pick this topic because for one, I am a homosexual and obviously very interested in the movement for equal rights and the the medias growing attentiveness towards LGBT issues. I think that it is important for other people to know about the subject because in a sense, the gay rights movement is essentially history repeating itself. In order to improve society as a whole, humanity must pay attention to the patterns in which history has moved to prevent future mistakes. Also, there are still many people who are in the dark regarding homosexuality and simply do not know enough about the subject, and I would like this paper to help make these people more aware of the issues LGBT have faced and are still facing. My intended audience would be the general public. As stated earlier, many people still do not completely understand the reasons behind the gay rights movement or LGBT people themselves. Fear and hatred stem from ignorance, and with this paper I wish to dispel at least a little bit of this ignorance to help better society at least a tiny bit. Thus, anybody who would be willing to read this paper would be likely to benefit from my research. Also, anybody who would go into reading this paper with an open mind, as with any other essay, has potential to be persuaded. I plan to convince the audience to agree with me simply through using fact and logic, rather than going too over the top with ranting and raving.

John Andrade 10/24/11 WR 13300 So far, I have found several books on my topic. After looking through them, I have come to find that they will be of substantial help to my paper. Unfortunately, there have been many new developments regarding my topic over the course of the past several years, so as a result I will have to find more recent sources, such as newspaper and magazine articles. Fortunately, nowadays there is so much information on this topic that finding recent sources will not be hard to come by. My audience will expect a substantial amount of background information, which for this subject would be societys view on homosexuality up until modern day. It would also expect a variety of sources to make my paper credible. From the course, I will definitely be able to integrate sources. The gay rights movement is all about identity and acceptance from a community, as is what we have been reading in class this entire semester. As for concerns about the project, I do not have any regarding finding information or the paper itself. Rather, I feel as though I will have issues with time management and being able to write this paper without waiting until the last second (which with a project like this I know I cannot afford). Thus, my only question would be How should I space writing this paper out over the course of the next few weeks?.