My chosen focus for the Paradigm Shift project is gay rights, specifically how the attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people have changed in the U.S. In this project, I will cover roughly the past 30-40 years. Over this time period, there has been a dramatic positive change in the way that the U.S. perceives the gay community. One of the major factors that caused this shift is the AIDS crisis, which resulted in a large number of LGBTQ+ individuals coming out. Once the gay community began to speak out and became more visible, the U.S. became more accepting of LGBTQ+ individuals and began to move toward equality.
The shift in how the U.S. views LGBTQ+ rights needs to be explored because it is important to understand of the history of the gay community, especially the challenges that were overcome in the fight for equality. In order to continue to promote the social equality and inclusion of marginalized groups such as this one, it is vital that we analyze both historical and current attitudes toward them.
A major point of contention related to the shift in attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people is how to evaluate a shift that a lot of other people know about but interpret differently from each other. While a large number of people are in support of LGBTQ+ rights, there are still many in the U.S. that believe that the shift toward a more accepting society is not positive. Other points of contention are how the shift can be appropriately measured and where to locate the origin of the shift.
I will mainly focus on the fact and quality stases. Some questions I will focus on include: