Rhetorical Analysis: Stonewall Riots

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Various controversies have arisen from the LGBT community since it stepped into the limelight during the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the events known as the beginning of the LGBT movement. One of these dilemmas is the faith identity of LGBT youth and how their sexuality might be handled as teenagers. Reparative therapies, also known as conversion therapies, have become popular ideas on how to fix teenagers’ sexual orientations. “My Take: Let’s Protect Religious Counselors Amid ‘Conversion Therapy’ Dance-Off”, authored by Gabe Lyons and published in the CNN Belief Blog, offers a subjective view on why religious freedom should be protected through conversion camps. “Five Christian Pastors in Illinois are Challenging a State Law Banning ‘Conversion …show more content…

According to Lyons, “We all have friends or family members who have experienced sexual or psychological childhood trauma.” His use of the first person, “we”, includes the audience in a group with himself to further appeal to their emotions. That sentence may make an audience relate to a personal occurrence in their own life. Pathos is also used throughout the entire article in Lyons’ diction. He chooses to address how the LGBT community can also benefit from the religious freedom he writes about. This causes the audience to feel sympathetic towards the LGBT community, and it also might cause them to think that Lyons is taking a more objective stance on the issue.
Because of Schmelzer’s objective tone in “Five Christian Pastors…”, there is little appeal to the audience’s emotions favoring either stance of religious freedom. One piece of pathos Schmelzer does use, though, is the suicide of Leelah Alcorn, a young transgender teenager who underwent conversion therapy. Alcorn wrote of her experience and how much she had disliked it, inferring that it was one of the reasons she committed suicide. This reminds the audience of her death and, moreover, that people from the LGBT community have committed suicide due to their experience with reparative

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