As much as I really liked the topic that I posted as my persuasive essay topic last week I have decided to change it. I feel that the other topic, the pressure to look perfect, would be better suited for a paradigm shift paper or something similar. I didn’t decide to change my topic until last Friday morning when I went onto the library website to start doing research for my original topic. Before I got anywhere on the research, an article about gay marriage caught my eye and so I started reading. I learned that there will be two Supreme Court hearings next week that are directly related to gay marriage in America. The first one will be about the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the legislation in California that bans gay marriage in the state. The second on deals with the constitutionality of DOMA or the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Gay marriage was one of the strongest topics on my brainstorming list and so I couldn’t help but think that the upcoming cases to be heard are great examples of Kairos and I took it as a sign that I should change the topic of my paper.
As far as an outline goes, I don’t have an introduction or a real order of things. I do not plan to focus specifically on Proposition 8 or DOMA. After my introduction I plan to give a brief history of gay rights in the USA. The goal of this would be to get my reader up to date if they are not already there.
Next I will focus on DOMA, as it is a big part of the gay marriage debate today and how it is unconstitutional. After DOMA I will focus on other legislation surrounding the issue and finally, I will talk about the change in public views and attitudes.
This is obviously subject to change as I do more research but as for now this is what I have from the research I have done.