Book Report (Parker)

Gay Rights In America

Gay Right movements have been going on for many years, dating as far back as 1924! In 1924, The Society for Human Rights in Chicago became the country's earliest known gay rights organization. Alfred Kinsey, an author, published a book called 'Sexual Behavior in a Human Male'. Revealing to the public that homosexuality is far more widespread than was commonly believed in 1948. 

In 1951, The Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights association, is formed by Harry Hay, considered by many to be the founder of the gay rights movement. In 1956, the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, the Daughters of Bilitis, was established in San Francisco in 1956. Later in 1959, the first gay play started with The Madness of Lady Bright by Lanford Wilson, and The Haunted Host by Robert Patrick. As gay rights in America started to unfold in America, people started realizing that being gay wasn't such a bad thing at all! In 1963, Illinois became the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. When 1966 came around, the worlds first the transgender organization, the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, was established in San Francisco. A revolution started in 1969, The Stonewall riots transformed the gay rights movement from one limited to a small number of activists into a widespread protest for equal rights and acceptance. Patrons of a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Inn, fought back during a police raid on June 27, sparking the three days of riots. In 1973, Homosexuality was removed from its official list of mental disorders. About 75,000 people participated in the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington, D.C., in October. It was the largest political gathering in support of rights to date. After the march, in 1982, Wisconsin became the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. 1984 comes around, the city of Berkeley, California, became the first city to offer its employees domestic-partnership benefits. Then in 1996, In Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court strikes down Colorado's Amendment 2, which denied gays and lesbians protections against discrimination, calling them “special rights.” According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, “We find nothing special in the protections Amendment 2 withholds. These protections . . . constitute ordinary civil life in a free society. “Basically now, gay rights have now the same amount of rights as straight people have. The world is now getting closer to becoming an equal nation. In 2000, Vermont became the first state in the country to legally recognize civil unions between gay or lesbian couples. The law states that these “couples would be entitled to the same benefits, privileges, and responsibilities as spouses.” It stops short of referring to same-sex unions as marriage, which the state defines as heterosexual.

Since today, many states have hopped aboard the legalizing of gay marriage train. Just recently, Oregon has legalized gay marriage! With all these facts, it’s most likely that most of the nation will eventually legalize Gay Marriage!

Michael Lewis: Flash Boys Reports

Flash Boys is about a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of those who control the stock market. The markets have become a lot less free and safe, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks. Working at different firms, they come to this realization separately; but after they discover one another, the flash boys band together and set out to reform the financial markets. They all eventually come together to make sure that high frequency traders are at no advantage and aren't using the market to their complete advantage.

The characters in Flash Boys are awesome, each are completely different from what you think of when you think of “a Wall Street guy.” Several have walked away from jobs in the financial sector that paid them millions of dollars a year. From their new vantage point they investigate the big banks, the world’s stock exchanges, and high-frequency trading firms as they have never been investigated, and expose the many strange new ways that Wall Street generates profits.

The importance of the light Michael Lewis shined into the financial world shows just how corrupt our Stock Market exchange really is and how much needs to change so that everyone is working on a fair playing field. If you have any contact with the market, then this story is happening to you because even retirement plans are being attacked. In the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting read. The characters in the story are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don’t get paid for that; they have institutionalized injustice and are willing to go to war to make sure everyone is playing fair.

Following the release of his book an investigation by the FBI into the "black boxes" and dark pools that he talked about in his book showed that whatever he was talking about was getting a lot of traction and of high importance. MSNBC, John Stewart, and Stephen Colbert all had interviews with him as soon as the book came out. It was the number one best seller on Amazon in under 24 hours and became so widely known that everyone knew who he was and what he stood for in a matter of hours.

The chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Jo White, stated in Congressional testimony on April 29, 2014 that U.S. financial markets "are not rigged" in response to a question on Lewis's book. On May 1, the SEC announced a $4.5 million fine for the New York Stock Exchange and two affiliated exchanges, on charges related to Lewis's book (high-frequency trading). The exchanges neither admitted, nor denied the charges. While Lewis can only estimate the cost to investors of the abuses, he believes it is over $5 billion per year, perhaps as much as $15 billion per year or even higher.