1. AIDS: A Worldwide Plague

2. Essential Questions What causes AIDS? How is AIDS transmitted? Why has AIDS been viewed differently than other epidemics? What accounts for the different ways in which countries have responded to this disease? Do the wealthier countries of the world have an an obligation to help poorer countries deal with AIDS?

3. “The principal factors which influenced my life are: nonviolent tactics; constitutional means; democratic procedures; respect for human personality; a belief that all people are one.” —Bayard Rustin Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement

4. Essential Questions How did ideas about the place of African Americans in American society change between Reconstruction and the 1950s and 1960s? How did Bayard Rustin’s homosexuality influence his effectiveness as a civil rights activist? How successful was nonviolence as a strategy in the civil rights movement? Evaluate Rustin’s statement that nonviolence had to be not just a strategy, but an ideology.

5. Handicapped or Handicapable?

6. Essential Questions How do people generally feel about those with physical and mental differences? How have the handicapped been treated in previous centuries? Why and how have past attitudes toward the handicapped changed? How have the actions of individuals affected changes in the way handicapped people are viewed?

7. Harvey Milk and the Gay Liberation Movement “All men are created equal. No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words.” —Harvey Milk

8. Essential Questions What are some similarities and differences between the Gay Liberation movement and other liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s? How have ideas about homosexuals changed over the last century? Which do you think is a more effective method of achieving social goals: direct action (protests, boycotts, etc.) or political involvement?

9. The Nazi Persecutions of Homosexuals Pink Triangles

10. Essential Questions Why was Weimar culture tolerant of homosexuals? What historical events led to the rise of the Nazis to power? What parts of Nazi ideology made them particularly repressive towards homosexual men? How were homosexuals treated compared to other persecuted groups?