In the movie Philadelphia, Tom Hanks, Andrew Beckett goes through many different issues. He gets a raise at a powerful law firm in Philadelphia. Soon after he experiences symptoms of HIV. He goes to the hospital and the doctors do blood work and find out Andrew is HIV positive. Andrew decides to keep is homosexuality and positive testing to himself. Mr. Beckett doesn’t tell anyone he works with about his results and they fired him for keeping it to himself. He then meets up with a lawyer to sue the law firm for discrimination. Andrew explains to the lawyer what happened, and he is the only lawyer who will help Andrew.
The ethical dilemmas in this movie are right vs. wrong in many ways. Andrew Beckett couldn’t immediately get a lawyer because of a disease he had. He had to search around and actually ended up going to eight different lawyers until he found one that would help him. The lawyer that was going to help him was also very homophobic and doubted that they were going to win at first. Until Mr. Beckett came back from the bookstore with a perfect argument for his case. He had read and retained important information for his case that would end up winning the case for him. By law you cannot fire someone for having AIDS because it is known as a disability and you are legally handicapped for having that disease.
Another way this movie portrayed right vs. wrong is just the simple fact that Andrew Beckett couldn’t live a normal life because of having AIDS. Almost everyone looked at him differently. He literally had reporters saying stuff to him because he was gay and screaming hateful things just because he was gay. People didn’t even want to be in the same room as him. They only people who supported that he was fighting for his rights was his family. They didn’t look at Andrew any different.
Andrew’s sexual identity is the reason why it was hard for him to win the case. He had to try harder to fight for his rights because he was attracted to a male. He contracted an incurable disease from having sexual relations with a male. Because of that he had to fight harder for his rights? That makes absolutely no sense and is completely wrong. There is nothing right about that. Just because he was a homosexual, he was told his behavior was not acceptable. That is so wrong.
In conclusion of the movie Philadelphia I feel it was a lot of what was right vs. what was wrong. Tom Hanks did a very good job playing the character of Andrew. He was strong and firm to the fact that all MEN were created equal not only straight men were created equal. Hanks also made it apparent that all people can get along when in the end. He taught his lawyer that just because his client was gay it didn’t mean he couldn’t win a case.
