Two public controversies that specifically the United States has had to deal with include the Supreme Court Case of Roe vs. Wade in regards to abortion laws, as well as some parents refusing to have their kids vaccinated out of fear that they may develop autism or another kind of developmental deficiency.

The Supreme Court case of Jane Roe (not true name) versus Henry Wade, who was the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas. Jane Roe was challenging a Texas law, which made abortion illegal unless ordered by a doctor in order to save a woman’s life. In her lawsuit, Roe alleged that the state laws were unconstitutionally vague and abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Justice Harry Blackmun delivered the conclusion made by the majority of the court, with a 7-2 ratio, ruling that the anti-abortion law was unconstitutional and violated a woman’s fundamental rights to her body and choices. This was not well received by several people throughout the United States, as some people consider abortion to be murder, and that life is formed immediately at conception.

In the early days of immunization, distrust in vaccines was well-warranted. There was no official quarantine procedure for those who’d already been diagnosed with the disease and 18^th Century doctors didn’t have quite the same standards as we do in modern day when it came to sanitation and disease prevention. In 1998, a British doctor released a paper investigating the association of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine to bowel disease and autism. However, in 2011 this paper was found to be false, and founded on false claims with insufficient evidence. Though this paper was debunked, it had ruined the public’s opinion of the MMR vaccine and created several controversies across not only the United States, but worldwide, in the opinion of vaccines and the effects that they may have on the children who receive the vaccines.

Introduction: Imagine finding your perfect person. This person makes you laugh. You do everything with this person, and you want to spend the rest of your life with this person. Now imagine the government tells you that you cannot marry your person. This is a reality for countless Homosexual couples across the world, and includes an even more gruesome history within the United States.

• Main Points to Mention: Beginning of Shift – First reported execution of a homosexual man named Richard Cornish, in 1624.
  • • • • Brief history of Gay rights
        • Sodomy Laws
        • McCarthyism and the Lavender Scare
        • The Riots at Stonewall
• Main Points about turn of Shift – First “Pride Parade” known as Christopher Street Liberation Day March one year after Stonewall Riots in 1970.
  • • • • The Annual Reminder in Philadelphia
        • “GRID” to “AIDS”
        • Shift in Public Attitude towards Homosexual Couples
• Modern Day Shift:
  • • • • Barack Obama State of the Union Address mentions people of the LGBT+ Community
        • Supreme Court Ruling to Legalize Gay Marriage
• Impact to Everyone, and how it benefits the rest of the United States people

Conclusion: Homosexual tolerance in the United States has shifted greatly since first recorded in 1624, to 2015 when gay marriage was declared legal by the Supreme Court. Living in a country where people are not able to marry each other, solely because of their gender is ridiculous, and not the business of the government. Love is not something that should not be tolerated, as it is the one thing that is able to bring people together without condition. The government does not get to decide the quality of a relationship based on the gender of two individuals, because that is not their job.

Tolerance of Homosexuality in the United States, without a doubt, has gone through a very intense shift. One of the first mentions of a hate crime against a homosexual person was in 1624 against a man named Richard Cornish, who was executed in Virginia for alleged homosexual acts with a male servant. The shift begins to take a turn in the McCarthy era, under Senator Joseph McCarthy due to institutions carried out through him during the late 194os to the 1950s. Under McCarthyism, several homosexual people were executed due to their “private lifestyle”, and being accused of hiding secrets. This era was known as the Lavender scare, which was basically a witch hunt and mass murder of homosexual people, or the Cold War persecution of homosexual people. The shift begins to take a turn in 1969, when the Stonewall Riots begin, where there were numerous, spontaneous, violent demonstrations by the gay community against a police raid as a form of liberation for homosexual people. These riots caused a major shift in the tolerance of homosexual people in the United States, as members of the gay community didn’t really give other Americans the choice to tolerate them, as their demonstrations became violent. Then, finally, in 2015, the members of the gay community were officially addressed by the President of the United States, and it was stated that the intolerance towards these groups of people will not be tolerated any longer.