Kairos of Dr. Kameny's "We Throw Down the Gauntlet"

Dr. Kameny's speech employs Kairos in numerous ways, as his speech was given at a very crucial point in time for the gay community.
The court case he is commenting on was at the height of its controversy and its prominence in American minds (Kameny says the case "has achieved nationwide fame"). Thus, his arguments are likely to be heard by a much larger audience than otherwise. With his expanded audience, not only is he able to gather more support, but he also is able to confront the issue and inform the public about the discrimination that was occurring, which is just as important.
The speech was also given at the end of the 60s, which as we know was a very tumultuous period of cultural and social change. Thus, people were much more likely to be receptive of new ideas concerning gays than in a previous decade. Even still, many people were afraid of gays, especially since they had only recently started being public about it. People didn't understand homosexuality or what larger implications it might have, which led to prejudice. Dr. Kameny was fully aware of the uncertainty, misinformation, and fear concerning the gay community, so he employed the use of a slogan, "Gay in Good," in order to foster acceptance in the public.
Hilary Clinton's speech also contains Kairos in that her speech is on the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, her speech was given at a time when gays were much more accepted. Dr. Kameny faced far more antagonism and opposition.

Stasis Theory: Human Rights Day

In her 2011 Human Rights Day speech, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the issue of LGBTQ rights and freedoms.  There was (and still is) a huge debate on whether or not gay marriage should be legal.  Members of the LGBTQ community had been rallying for the support of the US government to legalize gay marriage.  People opposed to the idea of legalizing gay marriage believed that gay marriage goes against Christian beliefs, and that being gay is a "disease."  This opposition leads to a reaction from the LGBTQ community.  The idea behind their rallies, and behind Clinton's speech, is that gay people should have the same rights as straight people.  Clinton and the LGBTQ community argue that sexual preferences don't determine a person's quality.  Clinton argues that LGBTQ members are denied work opportunities and other opportunities to express themselves and prove their worth to society because of their sexual preferences.  Clinton believes that the US government should change their laws in order to guarantee equal rights to all US citizens, no matter their personal preferences.  The US government, led by president Barack Obama, had control over the law changes.  Clinton's speech, as well as the LGBTQ community's rallies, had an effect on governments.  In 2012, the year after Clinton's speech, President Obama announced his support of gay marriage.  Since Clinton's speech, a number of local governments have legalized gay marriage.  There are still campaigns for the federal government to declare restriction of marriage unconstitutional and illegal, but since Clinton's speech, progress has been made.

Hillary Clinton: Style Techniques

Hillary Clinton is a well-known Democrat - she believes in women's right to choose, higher tax on those who make more, and most important for this topic, equal rights for the homosexual community. She makes her standpoint very clear from the beginning of the speech by setting up the background of the community and the problems they have faced. Her speech has a clear timeline - past, during, present or problem and then possible solutions. Because of this clear timeline, the whole speech is more understandable to not only the intended audience but anyone who would want to read this speech later on to analyze it, much like what we are doing now. 

Unlike Kameny's speech, Clinton presents and seems to feel very formally because of the type of environment she is in. While she certainly believes in the issue and wants change, she does not have the same type of connection that Kameny made so clear in his opening statement. Perhaps this is because she does not NEED to establish a connection to the problem to make it clear that there is one.

Kameny presented his case in front of a judge when LGBT issues were new and never really called forward, however when Clinton presented her case, the LGBT community had made their problems known and heard around the world. She did not have to put herself in the shoes of the people she was trying to defend because they had made their problems clear on their own. Her speech was intended as a way to make the issue have a solution brought forward and give some power to their case.

In Clinton's speech she has a main theme - the LGBT community is just like us. There is no clear distinction between a person who is gay and a person who is straight, other than their difference in sexual partners. Clinton makes it clear that the LGBT community "are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes; and whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors." While we may not be part of the community ourselves, we most definitely know someone who is and they deserve the same rights that we do. As stated in previous posts, Clinton effectively uses logos and ethos in her speech to make her case understandable and obvious - there are no clear or big issues with making the LGBT community equal to the "straight and normal" community.

"We Throw Down the Gauntlet": Style

Frank Kameny presents his case to the judge regarding the injustice against the homosexual community, in particular Benning Wentworth. Kameny is sincere in his attempts to make the judge understand his view and the injustices that the homosexual community faces. To emphasize his points, Kameny uses many different stylistic techniques with discreet integration with logos, pathos, and ethos. Presented in previous blog posts, Kameny mainly utilizes ethos and logos. However, his seriousness, sincerity, and earnest nature are also presented throughout his speech.
While Kameny had to present his viewpoints with clear facts and examples because of the formal audience but an undertone of emotion is obvious. Kameny must know that persuasion does not entirely rely on facts, emotions have to be put on the table for people to understand that there is a need for change because it will allow for a betterment for the people. The care that Kameny puts into his words and support for the issue at hand allows for the judge to know that this is an issue that has to be addressed now.
Not only does Kameny use emotions as a style technique, he also uses organization of his speech. While he does not have a clear organized path to follow, he uses his varied style to allow him to be more involved in his speech. Kameny could have used this varied style to allow for more emphasis on the points that he believed would make his argument more understandable and viewed as more eminent. He carries the same view throughout the whole opening statement, there is a clear injustice against the homosexual community, however he varies in the statements, facts, and examples that he uses to present his point.
He becomes more and more involved in the speech, using lots of "we"'s to make the whole piece seem more important to Kameny, instead of just another case. A clear example would be when Kameny is discussing the homosexual community and trying to convince the judge that just as other human beings have feelings, "We have our sensitivities. We have our feelings. We are human beings." Putting himself in the same boat as the man who he is defending, Kameny shows the judge that this case will not only impact this one man but a whole community.
His style techniques, the discreet use of emotions, his organization, and putting himself in the same boat as the man who he is defending, allows Kameny to present and seemingly successfully prove his case - there is a deep injustice on the homosexual community which has to be fixed now.

"We Throw Down the Gauntlet"- Pathos

Dr. Kameny relies mostly on logos and ethos in his attempt to argue against the injustice facing Mr. Wentworth and the homosexual community as a whole. However, he does appeal to emotions as well to an arguably lesser extent.

The issue at hand is very sensitive one, so it is natural that an appeal to people's emotions is natural. The crux of Wentworth's argument is that he and his colleagues should not be subjected to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, which really has nothing to do with one's ability to do a job, regarding Mr. Wentworth. He says,

 " We have our sensitivities.  We have our feelings.  We are human beings.  You walk roughshod over those feelings and sensitivities, with hobnailed boots, as if we were somehow less than human---which is, of course, precisely the way all too many of you think of us. "

Really, he's trying to guilt the opposition and show them just how bigoted they are. And to me, it seems quite effective.

The other main example of pathos is Kameny's appeal to patriotism. Not everybody loves gays, but everyone does love America. Thus, he says that being gay makes him no less of an American, and so he and his peers are "American citizens," with all the connotation that goes along with those 2 words:
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Implicitly, he is forcing his audience to wonder how a country that prides itself on freedom can be so discriminatory.

Many of his arguments resurface later in the words of Hillary Clinton. Gay people are no less human than the rest of society. "Gay rights are human rights," because gay people are also human.

"We Throw Down The Gauntlet"- Logos

Dr. Franklin Kameny's Speech appeals to logic quite a bit, as he probably recognized that against bigotry and prejudice, the only things that can't be ignored are cold, hard, facts.

First off, he explicitly states that the "logical" thing to do is to sustain Mr. Wentworth's clearance. He then tries to reason with his opponents, claiming that as American citizens, gay people are as entitled to basic right as as heterosexuals are. They are not second-class citizens, and thus should not be held to different standards than heterosexuals, either. The issue at hand was that a gay man in the U.S. Department of Defense admitted to being sexually active. Another unnamed gay man professed to be a "reformed man," as if being gay was something that should or could be changed. However, the man who did not proclaim himself "reformed" and not sexually active was denied security clearance. The message here is clear. Sexually active gay men in our government compromise our national security and must be fired.

In all seriousness, Kameny is right to say that if a heterosexual man's sex life (or lack thereof) has no bearing bearing on his ability t do his job, then a gay man's shouldn't either.

Also, with his "Gay is Good" slogan (modeled after the "Black is Beautiful" movement), Kameny promotes the idea of 'Gay' being something good (obviously), in the sense that it is natural and not something to be feared. By convincing people that gay people are really not that different or abnormal, people naturally draw the logical conclusion that there is no reason to fear gays (something that begets prejudice and distrust).

Hillary Clinton's Appeal to Logos

Hillary Clinton's 2011 speech on Gay Rights in Geneva emphasized 5 main points, or "questions" that she felt were the most necessary and important about LGBT issues and laws. Any official speech has to be easy to follow and understandable to account for the diversity of the audience, Clinton's speech is exactly that. She follows a very logical and thought-out approach of how to make her argument come across in a manner where the audience would have no choice but understand and agree with what she has to saw. She begins with background of LGBT/Human Rights in the past. She then leads us through 5 major questions about LGBT and progression for the implementation and support of their community and laws that support them. She ended with a powerful statement about wanting to "be on the right side of history" giving the audience something to think about; do they think the "right" side would be preventing the Human Rights of the LGBT community or is the "right" side allowing the LGBT community the rights they seem to deserve? Clinton attempts and succeeds at presenting her logical arguments with the help of a variety of appeals to logos, her main appeal being to using comparisons to other minorities. 

Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights. 

Very evident in this specific example from Hillary Clinton's speech, it is obvious that she wants to logically lead everyone to the same conclusion as her; Gays are human, therefore they deserve the human rights that everyone has in the world. Reading through this particular statement it would be difficult for someone to find a fault in the logic she presents. Clinton even addresses the other viewpoints reasoning and explanations for not allowing LGBT rights and strongly dismisses them with her evidence and logical reasoning.
Another main attribute of Clinton's speech would be her use of making a broad generalization and then having support to back it up, in the form of either examples or statistics. An example would be the following:

But progress comes from changes in laws...Many in my country thought that President Truman was making a grave error when he ordered the racial desegregation of our military. They argued that it would undermine unit cohesion. And it wasn't until he went ahead and did it that we saw how it strengthened our social fabric in ways even the supporters of the policy could not foresee.

This particular example uses  a generalization with the support of a particular example from the past. With this example from the past as a reminder of how wrong people were about desegregation, Clinton has made it clear that the same mistake is being made about the LGBT community. She uses this comparison and example to make her argument more sound because it is supported by facts in the past. The audience has been proved wrong and logically the next conclusion they would see is that they could be wrong about this situation as well.