Proposal: For my essay I will be writing about the malicious religious group known as the Westboro Baptist church. I will be attempting to prove that the anti-homosexual and other transgender individuals message that the church is trying to spread, is actually helping the gay rights movement. In order to prove this counterintuitive topic, I will be using multiple sources that will give evidence to my claim.
Source 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pxE6_VY8aM
Background: This is a documentary of the Westboro Baptist church done by the British television channel BBC. Louis Theroux is interested in the Westboro Baptist church do to their extreme methods of spreading their religion, which turns out to be a religion of hate and bigotry toward homosexuals. BBC’s Louis Theroux takes a trip inside the church to not only figure out exactly why they are doing what they are doing, but to also try to reconcile it with himself and come to an understanding. He goes to protests with the group and attends one of their church meetings. He gets to talk to the pastor of the church along with many of the attendees. He learns about the pastor and how he has managed to brainwash the individuals of the church by psychologically preventing them from leaving through means of abandonment, but also even beatings.
How I intend to use: This documentary has a plethora of information that I can use in my essay. I get to see what it’s like to be in the church alongside the hate that the group receives on a daily basis. Seeing the pickets that the church does first hand allows me to realize that the feedback that the group receives is not mostly bad, but all bad. Louis even sees this and asks how the group why they think the picket was going well on a scale from 1 to 10, even though they had not had a single good reaction. They simply replied, “Every picket we do is a 10 out of 10”
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps
Background: General information on the Snyder vs. Phelps case. It tells about the case and its resolution in the supreme court. Even though Snyder had originally won in civil court. The Supreme Court ruled the churches actions constitutional. This case made the Westboro Baptist church feel powerful and made them nearly untouchable.
How I intend to use it: I am going to use this source in order to provide on the important Snyder v. Phelps case that first popularized the Westboro Baptist church. It is for this case that the church began to be disliked by the general public as people were horrified to see that what the church was doing is protected by the constitutions. As a result, people began to counter protest the church and fight back, which supports my argument the church creates opposition to themselves which results in an opposition to their ideologies.
Source 3: http://hypervocal.com/news/2012/15-inspiring-westboro-baptist-church-counter-protests/
Background: This article by India Kushner talks about what she think are the top 15 most inspiring counter protests to the church. Some of the protests were incredibly crafty and supportive to the other side of the argument.
How I intend to use it: I am going to use this article as a way of stating that people don’t like the church and this source gives me 15 examples of how people fought back. One of the protests that is given the counter protestors offer donations to the LGBT community. They receive huge amount of donations. This supports my argument because people who are coming to see a protest against the LGBT community are donating to help it.
Source 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Phelps
Background: Son of fred phelps who escaped the WBC and is now protesting against the church. He speaks out about WBC and tells his story about when he was inside the church. He is one of many that have left the church and he travels to campuses to stop this kind of extreme religion.
How I intend to use it: I’m going to explain his story and how he left the church due to the fact that he is a strong supporter of the LGBT community and against the church. Nathan talks of a brainwashing that the father, Fred Phelps oversees. This can be useful to propose that people don’t naturally hate the homosexual community, but they were forced to think that way.
Source 5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps
Background: Fred Phelps was the pastor of the Westboro Baptist church and father of many children in the church. He was a very energetic man for his age with very strange ideologies.
How I intend to use it: It’s important to include Fred into my essay because he is the leader of the church and likely responsible for who the church pickets. His ideologies are distorted and he brainwashed the members of his church to create a religious army against the homosexual community.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
With few exceptions, your explanations of the value of the sources to your argument are that “you’ll be interested to see how they can help you.” Needless to say, Ryan, that does not inspire confidence that you know much about the sources you’ve chosen, or much about your argument. Naturally, you can’t know how your essay will end up before you begin to write it, but you do start with a plan and a reason to select sources. The job of the Proposal is to lay out a preliminary case and some of the available evidence to prove it. This is not that.
Grade recorded.
Regrade provided. —DSH
I fixed this to comply with what the job of the prosal and 5 sources was supposed to be. Hopefully you’ll see this as a huge improvement, if not, let me know and I will fix it ASAP. Thank you very much.
Let’s do a thought experiment, Ryan. You’ve never heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. You’re reading Ryan Moyer’s Proposal for an argument he wants to make that somehow involves the church. Here’s what he says about his first source:
You’re finished reading Ryan’s background explanation. Now tell me: what does the Westboro Baptist Church do that interests Louis Theroux? What information does the documentary contain that will help Mister Moyer write an argument? What have you learned from his description of the Church, Mr. Theroux, or the documentary?
You have very little time to produce a post that SAYS SOMETHING specific about your sources. Every Background paragraph should be filled with the specific claims made by the source that you find useful in making your specific case.
Please review the model and the instructions.
It would also help if you began with an actual Proposal, Ryan. That part is completely missing. With it, we would stand a chance of understanding the value of your sources. Without it, we don’t know in the first place, what your subject is, what thesis you’ll attempt to prove, or how the evidence might support you.
revised
noted