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.
One thing I would add about the style of Clinton's speech is her use of specific and sharply realistic diction. She does not employ euphemisms to describe what LGBT persons have and still do face in many parts of the world. She does not dumb down the issue or condone a gray area of permissible discrimination. She clearly states the kinds of abuses by governments and individuals that should not be tolerated in the realm of human rights, including "declar[ing] it illegal to be gay," allowing "harm" to go "unpunished," "so-called corrective rape," forced hormone treatments, murder, and exile, just to name a few. Clinton puts these abuses in explicit terms so that no one can misunderstand or otherwise get around her point. Her tone remains polite and formal, but she clearly defines her stance and, by extension, that of the United States government.
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