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Podcast talks about the psychological aspect of the StoneWall to now. 

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Podcast talks about the psychological aspect of the StoneWall to now. 

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Kim Mills: June is LGBTQ Pride Month, marked by marches and commemorations to celebrate LGBTQ culture and advocate for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the US and around the world. This year, President Biden marked the occasion with an official proclamation that touted progress on issues such as marriage and workplace equality. But it also called out areas where LGBTQ rights are being threatened, including in dozens of states where legislators have introduced bills this year targeting transgender youth.

The focus of LGBTQ activism has evolved over the years, with the issues and political pressures of the day-from the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, to the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" rule in the 1990s, to the fight for marriage equality in the early 2000s, and the focus on transgender rights today. How has psychological research reflected and responded to these changes? How has it contributed to the public discussion of prejudice and discrimination against sexual minorities? When has it helped, and when has it hindered the drive toward equality for LGBTQ people, especially in the United States? What role has it played in moving the needle in the fight for LGBTQ rights, especially in our courts?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

Our guest today is Dr. Peter Hegarty, a professor of psychology at the Open University in the United Kingdom, where he studies the history of sexuality and gender in psychology. His 2018 book, "A Recent History of Lesbian and Gay Psychology, From Homophobia to LGBT," traces the psychological research on these issues since the 1970s. He was also guest editor of a special issue of APA's journal American Psychologist entitled "50 Years Since Stonewall, the Science and Politics of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity."

In addition to his work in the history of psychology, he conducts experimental research in areas including auditory gaydar and how beliefs about the biological basis of sexual orientation influence prejudice and discrimination. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Hegarty.

Peter Hegarty, PhD: Thank you, Kim. It's an honor to be here.

Mills: You're a historian of psychology, as well as a psychologist. Let's start with some history. You begin your book in the 1970s just before the Stonewall uprising in New York, which is considered to be the beginning of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Was it also a turning point in how the field of psychology regarded sexual minorities?

Hegarty: It was. There was a strategic decision on my part to start in that time period. That was because very often when I read histories about the history of sexuality and psychology, the ones to which we had access, they very often ended in that period. So very often, you see a broad brush stroke starting with Freud, proceeding through Kinsey studies, maybe mentioning Evelyn Hooker and her work in the 1950s. It often ends up in something like the Stonewall uprising, and then the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to begin to de-pathologize homosexuality.

That framework of thinking, where the past ends and the present begins somewhere around the mid-1970s, is not something that's unique to this area of psychology. Very often, that's something that we kind of encounter as historians of psychology. I think there is a number of us who were sort of thinking, "Well we clearly don't live in the 1970s anymore. And when we teach the history of psychology to our students, the 1970s is a very, very far away period. So things need to be massively updated."

One of the reasons why I chose that time frame was to try to make a contribution to a much larger movement in the history of psychology to think about what has the recent history of psychology been? What's been happening in more recent decades? And sort of changed the narrative focus of how we do things.

And was there a period in which things changed in psychology? Absolutely. That was a really interesting period of incredible change where issues about social justice, issues about inequality, came to the fore much more than that had done. Exploded in many ways, because psychology wasn't able to keep a culture that was separate from the many social movements that were characterizing the American political scene at this point in time, and not least, of course, the civil rights movement and the protests against the Vietnam War.

Looking back at that period, you can see that it is a time where it is-it's also the period where people start to talk about generation gaps. That's a term that's used for the first time, if I understand it correctly, in the 1960s, where there seems to be a very different consciousness between younger and older people. And, a difference about what psychology should do, what it should be doing, what it's accountability is around issues around chronic injustice, and whether it is possible to kind of remain on the fence about those kinds of things.

One thing that happens in that context, which is sort of less well known, I certainly didn't know about it for a long time, is that in addition to having activist protests at the meetings of the American Psychiatric Association in the early 1970s, there was one at the American Psychological Association in 1973, on a very similar model. And shortly after that, what happens is, there's a Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, I believe it's called. And it becomes part of the Board for Social and Ethical Responsibility in Psychology, which is something that had only existed for a few years, and was set up by Kenneth Clark and some other people, because of these questions about what was psychology doing about bi-gender injustice and racial injustice.

So that's a little bit where the story starts, to be sure. And I'm kind of curious in there about, we often tell the story about psychiatry, which of course is so important, because psychiatry held this power over the diagnosis, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. But it is funny that psychologists, myself included, so often told that story about psychiatry and never told the story about psychology itself.

Mills: That's a good point. I did want to talk about that a little bit. Some of our listeners might not really be aware of how psychiatry was compelled to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is pretty much the arbiter of what constitutes a mental illness or a mental disorder among all behavioral health practitioners. Can you talk a little bit more about how that happened with psychiatry, which, yes, was very distinctive, but then psychology which followed a couple of years later?

Hegarty: Yeah, absolutely. It's a good question to ask about that-go a little bit further back in its history maybe. The first codes are from the 1950s. They were written from a blueprint for the codes for including or excluding soldiers in the American armed forces in World War II. It was in that context where the armed forces begun to inquire about men's homosexuality and used that as grounds for excluding them from the military.

Mills: Right, because they were thought to be security risks as a result.

Hegarty: Well, I think in World War II, they were also thought to be a risk more in terms of mental health. Would they be fit for combat or would they end up being sort of a drain on the Army's resources? I think that was also a sort of concern. That's why it was sort of within psychiatry. But you're right. That rationale did emerge later on, and to be sure, to justify that policy.

So the DSM was also initially a very psychoanalytic document that was coming under question in the 1970s, the psychoanalytic basis for calling a lot of things a mental disorder was quite insecure. And maybe homosexuality was the very best example of that. Activists such as Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny began to target the APA and the DSM strategically towards the very end of the 1960s, and to articulate it as a problem. Their writings are very interesting, and are ahead of some of the things that are happening in psychology at the time.

That started off with a process of direct action and protesting, and disrupting meetings and using those kinds of tactics which were common to various rights movements at the time. And then, there were also some politics where there were some sympathetic psychiatrists. There was probably a little bit of a silent minority of psychiatrists who were very unhappy about this diagnosis, actually. And some surveys at the time actually suggested that's the case.

And so there was some politics behind the scenes that then led some of those actors to actually speak at an APA conference. That initiated a vote of members as to whether homosexuality should remain a mental illness or not. I think that vote was not quite a two thirds, one third majority. It was a bit closer than that.

And then, the next version of the DSM was published in about 1980. Even still, it was far from complete. If you just think about sexual orientation for a moment, because what was sort of retained there was this idea of what we kind of know as ego dystonic homosexuality. If you were gay and you wanted a psychiatrist to try and cure you, what you might now call conversion therapy or sexual orientation change efforts, that was still legitimate in psychiatry. That didn't go away until the '90s.

Now, you mentioned that the DSM is kind of the arbiter of mental health. That's absolutely right. It's extremely powerful. But there's always sort of been two systems in modern psychiatry, I mean from World War II on, the other one is the ICD, the International Classification of Diseases, which covers physical health and mental health. It didn't remove homosexuality until the very early '90s. That's the event that is celebrated by IDAHOBIT Day in May.

Mills: I'm just curious. For so many years, psychology and psychiatry viewed homosexuality as a mental illness. Was there really any actual scientific evidence for such thinking?

Hegarty: That's a really good question. I mean, what counted as scientific evidence then, and what counts as scientific evidence now? It's not the same thing.

I think what happened, to be charitable to that, is that they were self-fulfilling prophecies. People who were gay or lesbian, people who were queer, people who were troubled by their sense of self might reach out to a mental health professional for help. They might present as wanting this aspect of themselves to go away, because that was how they could imagine living a better life. And so that definitely happened, to be sure. But I think evidence that people brought to bear to challenge that consensus is really quite interesting at that period.

Two people who do often stand out in the U.S. context are Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker. One of the things Kinsey was concerned about was the self-fulfilling prophecy. He thought, "Well, there are these people for whom homosexuality is power to their life." And Kinsey was bisexually oriented himself. He thought, "If I go outside of these cities, and I go outside of these little tiny little secret gay enclaves, then I'm going to find these people who are very different from each other, and it's going to challenge this stereotype about what the signs of homosexuality are," which were things like gender inversion, or artistic interests for men, or things like that.

And so, that's very much what the Kinsey Studies are all about. And why Kinsey samples so widely. And why he kind of gets in his car and travels to every state and studies people who have no understanding of homosexual culture, but might be practicing homosexuality in their sex lives. And indeed, that's what he finds. That was sort of Kinsey. He really didn't like Freud or any of these kinds of ideas that there was a distinct homosexual personality.

Evelyn Hooker was a experimental psychologist who went at this in a very different kind of way. I think, in the post-war period, between World War II and the Stonewall Uprising, for the sake of some book ends, there was a lot of discontent in psychology about the psychiatric basis of mental health care, because it was considered to be quite infirm. Psychologists developed a lot of scientific ways of thinking, many of which had the effect of sort of reigning that in, one of which, of course, was the language of talking about the kind of validity and reliability of tests that got much more developed in that period, and often things like the Rorschach test, where there's targetive thought.

The Rorschach test was the target of a controlled experiment that Hooker did, as well, where she took gay and straight men, gave them all Rorschach tests, and found that there was no difference. Now, I kind of don't think that's actually the interesting thing about what she did at all. I really think that's the most dull and boring thing.

I think what she did that was absolutely amazing, was she was friends with a guy called Bruno Klopfer, who, at the time was sort of the Rorschach guru, or one of the Rorschach gurus in the US. They both ended up teaching in UCLA around the same time. She gave the test results to Klopfer to analyze. And he read them and he said, "Oh my God. If I hadn't known that this guy was gay and this guy was straight, there's nothing in the Rorschach profile that I could have done to do that."

I think what was so smart about that was, first of all, realizing that by-I think Bruno Klopfer is the real study participant in that study. There was three experts. But I think Klopfer was probably the most important because of his status. I think what Hooker did is, she took that sort of scientific lens that had always been sort of looking at gay people and assuming there was a difference between gay and straight people, and using that difference whether it was real or purported, to kind of build a deficit model and build a diagnosis, and build a mental health story. What she did is she took that gaze and she turned it around. She turned it upwards on the form of expert reasoning that would interpret these Rorshachs. And when it did, the whole system kind of crashed.

So I always look at that and I always think what was really brilliant about Hooker was not that she went out and found no difference between two groups. I think that's great. But I think its the fact that the way she enjoyed Bruno Klopfer in that respect is quite brilliant.

And then lastly, she made a film about her life. I think, actually the AK might've made it before she died. She died in the 1990s. Her reflections in that film about the events later on in the 1970s are really very interesting, because she kind of says, "You know, when I saw all of these protests happening at the American Psychiatric Association, I was initially quite worried. I thought this was bad. I thought this is going to blow the respectability of these lesbian and gay movements." But then she said, "No. Then I realized, this is what's going to create the change."

So I think it's just kind of fascinating to sort of think about this, because I think this is what often happens in history. One might be kind of ahead of the times at one point in time, but then at another point in time, other people are ahead of the times. You know? And I think there's something lovely in her kind of mature reflection on this, of when she was ahead of the times and maybe when she gets down back and say, "Oh, I thought that was wrong, but actually, no, no, no. Those people had the right idea about how to put all of those things together at that point. They created the change I couldn't have done that."

Mills: What role has sexism played in the way that psychologists and other mental health professionals viewed LGBT people over time? And what role is it playing even today?

Hegarty: Probably quite a large one. I'm not sure it's always a good idea, in general, to think about sexism and hetero-sexism, and racism as necessarily being completely separate kinds of things, as they're often very, very bound up with each other. I mean, I think what mental health has to do, always, is sort of specify in a really vague way, what it means to be a mentally healthy person. And that's an incredibly thought-y question. I don't even know the answer to that question about myself on some days, I have to say. I mean, I'm not saying that facetiously. I honestly, seriously don't know that sometimes. But I think it's very difficult to do mental health in a humanistic way to sort of enable somebody to be their full selves and then to sort of codify that, and to write out what those procedures should be, or what those categories should be, without, at the same time then, drawing a norm about what would most be to be a mentally health person?

So, I'm going to turn this kind of away from gender and towards race a little bit. But just there is a paper in the American Psychologist Special Issue, which you mentioned so nicely. It's an archival history of something called the Eromin Center which was set up in Philadelphia by gay and lesbian people in the early 1970s. They wanted to do affirmative counseling. They grasped this kind of idea from Carl Rogers that people needed to be listened to, without judgment, with sympathy. And they grounded this in their own lived experiences, and thought this was a better basis for doing this kind of humanistic intervention than the models they had been given by psychology. I think as a community based project, addressing hetero-sexism, addressing real mental health needs, that was a very good starting point in 1970. Rejecting those things and going with-that made a lot of sense.

But as the story develops, what you can see is there was also limits to that personal experience. And they became very apparent in the story as the center began to engage with people who were not white, as it began to engage with a younger generation of people, as it began to engage with transgender people. It began to engage with people who were coming into the U.S. from overseas. It does tell us a little bit of a story about why it's so challenging to specify what mental health is without setting a norm. You know? I think that's always a risk in doing it.

I don't have any mental health training, I should say. Nobody should ever entrust anybody's mental health to me. That's a bad idea. It's happened in the past. It hasn't ended well.

Mills: Let's switch gears for a minute, and move to talking about the AIDS epidemic, beginning in the 1980s. How did that change the questions that researchers were asking?

Hegarty: Yeah, I think it's a really timely question to ask now in the middle of COVID, as well.

Mills: Sure.

Hegarty: I think we might think about that relationship a bit later on as well. Yeah. I looked for what psychologists were writing in regard to HIV/AIDS and when. I think there's a real sea change in the middle of the 1980s on this. When the President's Commission Report comes out, National Academy of Science puts out a report, and in the early part of the 1980s, what you can see happening in science is, there's very much an approach that HIV/AIDS is going to be addressed first and foremost by a biological model. By a biological model I mean like testing good drugs and ultimately a vaccine. There's sort of an idea of a vaccine.

What's not getting a lot of attention is any kind of community-based response, any kind of behavioral response. But that's all sort of being developed in the communities, most hurt by HIV, grassroots, bottom up. Particularly, an awful lot happens in the New York area. An awful lot happens in California and other places. Right?

Mills: Yeah. Gay Men's Health Crisis, ACT UP people like that who-yeah.

Hegarty: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I think those groups have different relationships with their local governments that are quite different in different American places? I think it's a little bit happier in parts of California than it is in New York, if I've got the history right.

But there's very little. Now, there's a short kind of special section of American Psychology in about 1984. And there you can see that some people who had been leading the kind of gay affirmative initiative in the 1970s, particularly Steven Morand, whose now a counseling psychologist, writing there and saying, "This should be an issue. APA should take note of this. There's mental health implications of this epidemic." Which is not something that people-has a lot of attention in the national discourse about HIV/AIDS to the extent that there is a national discourse about HIV/AIDS, because of course, there isn't very much of one.

But I think after these reports come out in the '80s, what you start to see then is psychologists can see, "Ah, there's research questions here. Ah. There's fundable research questions here." And there's a very large special issue of American Psychologist, about 1988, which I went through it in quite a bit of depth. There you can see psychologies of all kinds and stripes, social psychologists, community psychologists, biological psychologists, kind of saying, "This is what our field could do to make a contribution to HIV/AIDS."

In the book, I venture this idea. I am interested to see what listeners think about it. But I think, once that happened, and once HIV/AIDS became a way for psychologists and for psychology in the United States, to have a more productive relationship with things like the NIMH, funding streams, and so on, I think it took some ideas that gay and lesbian people were just people, that were kind of a little bit marginal, they were quite marginal in the 1970s. But I think they became mainstreamed over the horrific period of HIV-AIDS.

There were clearly concerted actors doing incredible work. Division 44, which was initially lesbian and gay, but that, of course, has become much broader since, also took form in that context. But I think, if I think beyond those kind of small groups of people who are sort of pushing that, I think HIV/AIDS changed a lot of other psychologists' minds, who had no particular relationship to a specific LGBT group, or project, or initiative, and got those people thinking in a less heterosexist way.

Mills: But you do talk about fundable research and what I remember from those days is that there wasn't a lot of funding, because the government did not want to fund studies of gay people. And you couldn't ask questions about people's sexual orientation. It just made it really, really challenging to do the science that was needed.

Hegarty: Yeah, it does. I've recently written more based on sort of content analysis of research papers. People that research often will do this. Look back and say, "What have we ever asked about lesbians in 30 years?" That's the thing. People write those papers. If you look at the stuff on health in the mid-90s, on LGBT populations, it's like most, the vast majority of the health research has happened because of HIV/AIDS funding.

To get back to your original question about sexism, that's one of the reasons why, even though a lot of that work was very much in conversation with feminism, and I'm learning a lot from it. Actually, the research does become very androcentric, again. It becomes very much about men, because it's very much dominated by HIV/AIDS funding.

I think after that time, once that sort of starts to go away, after things like protease inhibitors become accessible in the mid-1990s and HIV/AIDS becomes potentially a less threatening illness if you can access those medications, that's an if. I think you actually see a little bit of a decline in research on LGBT populations. I think there's a peak of it, kind of in the '90s. I think it's been in somewhat of a decline since.

Mills: I want to talk about another underresearched area, which is the B in LGBTQ. A part of the movement that often feels overlooked and dismissed. Has psychology done any significant research into bisexuality? And if so, what are the findings?

Hegarty: I think psychology has. I think-I wish I could remember who had done this, because I'm now going to be vulnerable to exactly the thing that that person mentioned. I remember reading this article about bisexuality once where somebody said, "Bisexuality is like groundhog day. It's like it always kind of gets forgotten and reset and forget and reset and forget and reset."

I remember, I was feeling very old recently, because I was talking to some PhD researchers here in Europe. And when I say "in Europe," I do mean kind of everywhere, because all of those Zoom meetings. You know? We're in three different time zones. I was waxing nostalgic about the experience of being in queer book stores in the States, in the 1990s. A lost experience, right? Here comes a tear coming to your eye as well here. I remember seeing Marjorie Garber, who wrote this book, "Vice Versa," in the early 1990s, which was all about bisexuality, like just kind of talks through that book in a bookstore in San Francisco. It's just so vibrant and exciting.

And, it seems to me then, like a decade later, when I came to the UK, I ended up being the chair of the Lesbian and Gay Section of the BPS it was at the time. Now it's called the Psychology of Sexualities. We did a lot of work trying to push the British Psychological Society to put words like "bisexuality" and "transgender" in the name. They were very resistant to it, saying like, "There's no British research on bisexuality." We're like, "Well, yeah, because nobody can talk to us, because the name is wrong."

So, those kinds of things, I think, happen. And then, kind of-people haven't really come to terms with Kinsey as a bisexual figure, I think. Kinsey doesn't talk about sexual identity very much. He deliberately doesn't talk about sexual identity. He talks about sexual behavior. And there's reasons that he does not, that are kind of deep in how his thinking is.

But, I think that whole idea of the Kinsey Scale, which is what people have kind of grabbed from that in a funny sort of way, was a gloss on something that he was saying, which is like, "Lots, and lots, and lots of people have sexual histories that involve people of two genders." I think that's something that people find again, and again, and again, and again, and again. And it's like, "Oh, look. Here's a big surprise." Do you know what I mean?

Like, survey gay men. Lots of them have sex with women. Survey lesbians. Lots of them-and we're all going to act surprised. Like people change their sexual orientation label. I think there is something groundhog day about that, really. I think there is. There is something about that.

And, I'm not sure what a good and meaningful scientific finding about bisexuality might be. I mean, what's really-there are researchers who-you can Google it, who got a lot of play early in the 21st century for saying, "Look, look, look. Bisexual men don't exist. They really don't." And then those same researchers got a lot of play by saying, "Guess what? Bisexual men really do exist."

So, I think the dominant narrative about bisexuality is to say, "Here's the dominant narrative about bisexuality and we're changing it." And, what relationship that has people's lived experience? It probably does not a lot more than asking, "Is homosexuality nature or nurture?" Or something like that.

Mills: Let's talk about more recent history. One of the most striking rights gains in the last decade has been the quest for marriage equality for same sex couples. Psychologists at APA were knee deep in that fight, particularly through our amicus curiae program in which APAs filed briefs on psychological research in seminal court cases on marriage equality. How important has psychological research been to these legal victories?

Hegarty: I think in the U.S. context, it's very important. And the U.S. context is also quite distinct, I have learned, kind of working elsewhere. I think this is something I would want U.S. listeners to know, particularly U.S. psychologists is, you simply cannot do this kind of thing with amicus briefs and influence courts in other countries in the same kind of way. This is something culturally particular that is incredibly important. It is a vulnerable history. In psychology, of course, it has a long history going back to Brown versus Board of Education, gender discrimination cases more recently as well.

But certainly the APA starts to lead as the amicus brief strategy a little bit more explicitly in the 1980s. And, all of the amicus briefs that the APA has ever submitted are all online on the APA website. You can download them all and read them. I read lots of them writing the book. And what's striking, if you just look at it is, the APA has gone to court, to advise the court on the litigation of lesbian and gay rights more often than kind of anything else, by a lot. And, a lot of that difference is to do with the marriage stuff in the 21st century. But that trajectory was already set in train by earlier stuff about sodomy laws, equal employment laws, parents rights to custody of their children, and other things where APA had gone to court about lesbian and gay rights.

So, I think that is important. I think it sets-one of my colleagues here said recently, "It sort of sets a norm for a certain kind of research that a prejudice researcher might desire." It would be great if the research was used in something like that.

The other thing I would kind of say is, a lot of what people have done in that context is to do an Evelyn Hooker type project. To say, "Look, actually, relationships are not that different between same sex and mixed sex couples." I think that's probably right. On the left wing, lots of people have fantasies that LGBT people will dismantle lots of oppressive structures simply by being. And, on the right wing, lots of people have fantasies that LGBT people will dismantle status quo structures simply by being. We are neither the angels or monsters of these imaginations. We are ordinary people who eat breakfast, and walk dogs, and drive cars, and worry about carbon footprints and things like that.

And so I think a lot of psychological research just does that. It kind of says, "Eh-actually, things are not so different." And so, it was very, very obvious, I think, to a lot of people who are in any way involved in LGBT communities, that people had always been living in very long-term relationships where they were completely mutually interconnected in loving lifelong ways with people of the same gender, forever. Forever. And I think when the state woke up and said, "Well, what are we going to call these things to recognize that?" It would be hard to think of a better model for that than marriage.

So, that was all very important. I think there is also always questions about whether that push around marriage, and it was quite strong. I remember being at the APA in 2010, and I just remember, you could've gone to a talk about equal marriage pretty much any hour of the day all five days. I felt-I think I want to go hang out with the historians now. This is a lot. I feel like I've been married ash a little bit here.

I think people had good claims, that there were other things that were happening that were of much, much more pressing concern to important LGBT communities that were being silenced by the marriage thing. So yeah, psychological research, very, very important. But I think, also, the question of how central marriage became in the platform of LGBT rights in general, and particularly within APA, is something that I think-It's important to think about what else was sort of going on in that context as well, and what might not have gotten the same attention.

Mills: So if, as you were saying, the situation in the U.S. is distinct, because of our Supreme Court, the way that we're structured and the court cases have been really important, but not so much in other countries, is the research still useful in other countries that are grappling with this same question around marriage equality?

Hegarty: Somewhat. But I think, ultimately, what you would want is would want these rights to be given not on the basis of convincing people by psychological research. Do you know? I think that only takes you so far.

Mills: What's the other argument? That it's the right thing to do? That it's just-

Hegarty: That it's the right thing to do. That it's the right thing to do. So, I mean, two people who are really important in this history are a lesbian couple here in Britain called Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger, who did incredibly important work. Set up the Journal of Feminism and Psychology. Set up the Lesbian and Gay Section of the British Psychological Society, really important qualitative research on women's health and lesbian identity and 1000 other things. You can read their story for yourself. If you look at the Psychology's Feminist Voices website, their oral history is there. They talk about this.

But they took a case to the Supreme Court here in the UK with two other couples. They had a Canadian marriage at the time. But they wanted it recognized in the U.K. Sue had been living in Canada for a while. And, they lost their case, and had to pay the expenses of that, which run into the thousands. And, that was, I think, maybe about 2006 or so? And the judgment given at that point in time was just simply, "It's tradition that marriage is a man and woman." And now look where things are.

So, I think you'd want to win that argument on other grounds. The other place that's really interesting is Ireland, here. I can linger on this story for a while. I wasn't in Ireland the day of this vote. And, because I live overseas, I don't have a vote in Ireland, for good reasons. But the day that marriage referendum went down, it was kind of like, I got all of these sort of emails and messages from people I haven't heard from in years. Like years. I mean decades.

A guy I'd shared a flat with in California like 20 years earlier, I had completely lost contact with, emailed me from Hawaii. A very senior researcher in Europe, who I greatly admire, was like, when Ireland voted, it's like everybody wants to touch an Irish gay person. You know? I was the available Irish gay person in some people's network and they wanted-that was lovely. You know? So amazing.

But, what happened psychologically in Ireland was very interesting. I think it was informed by some of the things that happened in the U.S., particularly in California. Ireland had a very sustained campaign of personally touching every person in the country. They knocked on doors. Everybody had a face to face conversation. I think, as a result, everybody thought deeply about this issue.

That's a very different kind of thinking from putting up some research and saying, "Ha ha, your side is wrong, our side right. This group is similar, or this group is different." Which is a mode of argument you can do with psychological research, which is very common in the U.S. But I think what they did in Ireland was really different. They engaged people in a different kind of thinking. It was longer. It was harder. And it made sense to do it that way.

And, in Ireland that worked. And I think one of the countries in the former Yugoslavia, I think it was Slovenia, at the same year, had a marriage referendum as well. And it went against them. They didn't do that there, if I understand it rightly. They didn't get into rural community. They didn't have that kind of penetration.

So, I think what is real change? What is lasting change? I think it very often does involve deep conversations rather than, "Here's my research. Now I've proved you wrong." That has a place. And argumentation has a place in conversation. But it's not the whole of us. I think psychologists who do that kind of research need to recognize it's not the whole of us.

Mills: Right, right. And certainly, we have that history here in the U.S. Over the course of occasionally been ahead of where the populous is, for example, Brown versus Board of Education, we didn't-We're still fighting that war. The racism in our country is quite pervasive. You can't just change people's hearts and minds because a court says that this is what you need to do.

Hegarty: Yeah.

Mills: So that's an excellent point. I wanted to talk about your other work, your experimental research. I know one of your recent papers on auditory gaydar found that people may discriminate against lesbian sounding women and gay sounding men when they're making hiring decisions. Can you talk about that research a little bit?

Hegarty: Yeah. I just-massive shout out to Fabio Fasoli, who is the real genius in this. Fabio is an Italian psychologist who works at the University of Surrey, who has published extensively on auditory gaydar, and the kinds of discrimination it can bring around. He worked as a post-op fellow with me for two years in Surrey and it was in that context that we did that research.

Gaydar is very often studied in psychology. And gaydar is when you kind of make an inference about somebody's sexual orientation. Usually the inference that like, "Oo, I no longer assume that person is straight," because of something about them. It can be an aspect of their physical appearance, or something about the way they move, or in our study, something about the way that they speak.

So in these studies, people listen to very, very short extracts of talk, which were said to be from interviews where people were being interviewed for leadership positions in various roles. And, they listened to voices that with pre-tests, we could tell people thought either sounded gay or lesbian, or sounded like straight women or men. And as in other studies, we found a discrimination effect, so that people who sounded gay or lesbian were less likely to be hired for those roles and judged to be less suitable for them as well.

One of the things that was most surprising in those studies, and this was a consistent finding across three experiments, was that the stronger pattern of discrimination was in regard to the women targets. So there was much stronger discrimination against a woman who sounded lesbian compared to a woman who sounded straight, than against a man who sounded gay than against a man who sounded straight. That's an odd finding, because we looked at this still other ways. When Fabio has asked gay and straight women and men, "How much do you think your voice communicates your sexual orientation?" Men think that much more than women do. By the way, when you ask the question, "How much do you want your voice to communicate your sexual orientation?" The group that says they really want that is straight men. That's the group that really wants to communicate sexual orientation.

We've also done studies where we've asked lesbian and gay men, "How much do you fear this sort of discrimination happening to you?" And in that study, gay men more fear it more than lesbians do, and so on. So, it's sort of interesting that social representation of gaydar is that it's something that happens to men. But, in this study, it was actually stronger among women. And in most of the discrimination studies, actually, you don't see it just happening to men. You tend to see it happening to both men and women. So yeah, we are working on that. We are working on two more papers to figure out that conundrum, I have to say. And we have some partial answers to it. But let's see if the field thinks they're worthy of publishing.

Mills: Yeah, I mean that does sound like a surprising finding to me, largely because when we get back to the question of sexism and sex roles in society, because being masculine is valued. And if a woman comes off as being more "masculine" and potentially more gay, then you would think that, that would be valued. And instead, what you're finding is something quite different.

Hegarty: Yeah. No, absolutely. Thank you for coming back to it. People have this question, particularly around something like leadership roles in companies, which was the context here. That's a context where people supposedly imagine those people as being men by default. And value masculine attributes-overvalue masculine attributes, one could easily say. And so you might think that, yeah, stereotyping might go in a lesbians favor. And, no.

We did measure in those studies, "How much do you think these people are masculine or feminine?" And you do get some stereotyping effect. But the lesbian is not getting any boost out of that. What's happening is she is seen as less competent. That seems to be an inference from her perceived sexual orientation. That's the more consistent pattern that explains the discrimination across those studies.

I think a point here, and I think this is kind of difficult for some people, maybe, to wrap your head around, is that yes, there is this kind of gender-y kind of stereotyping around gay and lesbian people that happens all the time. That's not difficult to capture in experiments. But it's also the case that sexual orientation is still a status variable. It's still a marker of your status, and a marker of your higher status to be straight. That's why we kind of thought, "Actually, I think status needs to be thought about in this equation as well when we think about what is the landscape of discrimination that people might encounter if they are lesbian and gay," or even if they sound lesbian or gay. That's an important distinction to make, and go for leadership positions.

And of course these days, this podcast is a good example. There's some people that you meet only by hearing their voice. And, since COVID, there's a lot more of this kind of digitally mediated communication as well. So, how people sound can kind of make a big difference.

Mills: I want to wrap up with a question that takes us back to your book for a moment, because you ended it by writing that it's important for all psychologists to have some knowledge of the recent history of LGBT psychology and that the field offers something of what you call generalizable usefulness beyond gay men and lesbians to whom it initially applied. What can the rest of psychology learn from the history of LGBT psychology?

Hegarty: I'm glad you picked up on that point. I'm going to answer it by sort of thinking about two linguistic terms that are now really common. One is coming out. I think it'd be really hard to make an argument that coming out as a way of thinking about having a relationship between yourself and shame originates anywhere else other than in LGBT culture. That would be a little bit tricky to do. That particular understanding of it, you can come out as just about anything, now. So I could come out about the fact that I have rejoined our local chess club because I've seen "Queen's Gambit." It's a little bit shameful, but I know my community is there to affirm me. I could come out about the fact that I have a taste in particularly distasteful prog-rock British dad stuff from the early 1970s that's unlistenable for most people. I can listen to things like Henry Cow and King Crimson for a long time. That's a little bit shameful. It's utterly uncool music. Right? But I'm just going to venture out on this podcast and hope I live to tell the tale.

So, you can come out about just about anything. But that way of thinking, that way of thinking about the relationship between society and the psyche, disclosure and secrecy, it would be hard to argue that, that is not coming from LGBT culture in its origin. I think that's one of those gifts.

The other one, I think, is the suffix "phobia" to describe an irrational kind of prejudice. Homophobia, I think originates, probably back where you started, around the time of the Stonewall Uprising in New York. It's certainly where George Weinberg picks it up in his 1973 book and so on. These days, you can use that to describe anything. You can describe fatphobia. You can describe transphobia. You can describe an autismphobia. Some of my friends in the intersex world want to talk about intersexphobia. You can apply it to anything. I've even heard Vladimir Putin talk about Russiaphobia. And what do I do? I think that's lovely, Vladimir Putin owes an intellectual debt to LGBT movements. Isn't that all quite lovely? Trump probably talked about some kinds of Americanphobia as well, again, lovely. Thank you for acknowledging that intellectual debt, Donald.

So when you hear these things, I think this is another kind of linguistic oral conception gift for thinking about things. The prejudice against us just might be completely irrational, because I say, we're neither monsters or angels, but we're sort of ordinary people who eat breakfast, and walk dogs, and play chess, and listen to bad music.

Mills: Well, thank you for joining us today, Dr. Hegarty. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. And really interesting. I hope that we've taught our listeners a few things about the history of LGBT Psychology that they didn't know.

Hegarty: Thank you so much. It's been a joy.

Mills: You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology at www.speakingofpsychology.org, or on apple, stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please, if you can, leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. That's speakingofpsychology all one word, @apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

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Speaking of Psychology: The history of LGBTQ psychology from Stonewall to now, with Peter Hegarty, PhD

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Kim Mills: June is LGBTQ Pride Month, marked by marches and commemorations to celebrate LGBTQ culture and advocate for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the US and around the world. This year, President Biden marked the occasion with an official proclamation that touted progress on issues such as marriage and workplace equality.

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Cultural change that has been happening in the last 60 years. Improvement has been made and attitudes toward the LGTBQ community are better now. 

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Cultural change that has been happening in the last 60 years. Improvement has been made and attitudes toward the LGTBQ community are better now. 

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Unfair environmental injustice that is happening within the community. Areas with more same-sex couples also have a correlation to having more air pollution due to their living circumstances. 

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Unfair environmental injustice that is happening within the community. Areas with more same-sex couples also have a correlation to having more air pollution due to their living circumstances. 

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Biden signed am Executive order that will protect and defend the rights  and safety of the LGTBQ member. 

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Biden signed am Executive order that will protect and defend the rights  and safety of the LGTBQ member. 

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Today, in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility, the Biden-Harris Administration is uplifting transgender communities-and especially transgender kids and their families-by celebrating their resilience in the face of hateful anti-transgender laws being advanced across the country. Since President Biden's first day in office, the Administration has taken historic steps to advance equality, dignity, and safety for transgender Americans, and he is the first President in history to discuss the importance of expanding equality and combating attacks on the rights of transgender Americans in every State of the Union or joint session of Congress address. While transgender Americans have an unwavering champion in the President, conservative politicians have advanced hundreds of anti-transgender laws in states across the country so far this year, putting the fundamental rights and freedoms of trans Americans at risk. As President Biden has said, transgender Americans are some of the bravest people he knows, but nobody should have to be brave to be themselves.

Over half of transgender youth say they have seriously considered suicide in the last year because of the discrimination and rejection they face. In the face of these challenges, research shows that, when transgender youth are affirmed and supported, they thrive. Today, to hear directly about the joys, hopes, and challenges that transgender children are experiencing, the White House will host a Roundtable on Affirming Transgender Kids. Transgender kids and their parents shared their experiences living in states that have attacked their rights, discussed how these laws have impacted their mental health, and highlighted how parents are protecting their children.

Today, the Biden Administration is announcing additional steps to support transgender Americans:

Issuing a landmark report on ways to support and affirm LGBTQI+ youth, especially transgender youth. Today, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is releasing a new report providing the latest scientific research on supporting the mental health of LGBTQI+ youth. With the release of today's report, SAMHSA is providing new resources to parents, teachers, and mental health providers to help them use evidence-based practices to affirm and support transgender and LGBTQI+ youth and their families. SAMHSA finds that:

There is conclusive scientific evidence that affirming a transgender or LGBTQI+ child's identity is vital to protecting their mental health.

When transgender children have access to affirming environments, at home and at school, that are free from discrimination, rejection, and bullying, they are resilient and can thrive. When transgender children can access gender-affirming care - which includes counseling and mental health supports - their wellbeing improves.

In spite of the overwhelming scientific evidence that affirming an LGBTQI+ child is in their best interest, LGBTQI+ children - especially transgender children - face a nationwide mental health crisis because of the harassment, rejection, bullying, and discrimination they face. LGBTQI+ youth are at significantly increased risk of suicide when they face rejection and trauma.

State-level policies that stigmatize transgender children, for example by denying them access to medically necessary health care or banning schools from using LGBTQI+ inclusive curriculum, contribute to worse mental health outcomes for children and put them at increased risk of bullying and attempted suicide.

There is a clear consensus view among mental health experts that attempts to suppress or change a child's sexual orientation or gender identity - often referred to as so-called "conversion therapy" - are harmful, not supported by credible evidence, and should never be practiced.

Issuing guidance on gender identity inclusion for public servants. The Federal government most effectively delivers for the American people when our public servants draw from the diversity of the communities they serve. Today, the Office of Personnel Management released an update to guidance on gender inclusion in the federal workplace to help ensure agencies fully follow existing federal policies and antidiscrimination laws, and to help agencies adopt inclusive practices to foster a welcoming and supportive workplace for applicants and employees of all gender identities across the Federal government.

Today's announcements build on the Biden-Harris Administration's historic work to advance equality for transgender Americans since taking office, including:

Supporting transgender kids and their parents, and responding to state attacks on their rights. As the President has said to transgender kids at each of his State of the Union addresses, he is standing up for transgender kids and their families by:

Intervening legally when states violate the rights of transgender youth and their families. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed multiple statements of interest and amicus briefs supporting litigation against state laws that restrict the rights of transgender youth. For example, DOJ is challenging an Alabama law that denies necessary medical care to transgender youth based solely on who they are. DOJ also filed statements of interest in support of litigation challenging laws in Arkansas and West Virginia that ban transgender children from accessing necessary health care and playing on sports teams, respectively, as unlawful. DOJ also filed amicus briefs supporting the rights of transgender individuals in federal courts of appeals cases involving matters in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Indiana. In addition, DOJ reaffirmed that transgender youth in all states have federal constitutional and statutory protections, including in access to gender-affirming health care.

Expanding mental health resources for transgender youth. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) launched a pilot program to add dedicated services for LGBTQI+ youth to the national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, the nationwide suicide prevention and crisis hotline. The pilot helps LGBTQI+ youth, including transgender youth, experiencing a behavioral health crisis to connect with a counselor specifically focused on meeting the needs of LGBTQI+ youth and young adults.

Clarifying that LGBTQI+ youth are entitled to support and affirmation in the child welfare system. In response to at least one state launching child abuse investigations into the loving families of transgender children, President Biden condemned these investigations as callous government overreach that threatens families. In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services released guidance to state child welfare agencies through an Information Memorandum. This memorandum makes clear that states cannot weaponize their child welfare systems against loving families, and should instead use their child welfare systems to advance safety and support for LGBTQI+ youth, which importantly can include access to gender-affirming care. Finally, HHS worked with partners to launch a web portal of resources for child welfare personnel to support families of children who identify as LGBTQI+.

Supporting transgender students in our nation's schools. President Biden signed an Executive Order recommitting the Federal Government to fully abide by federal laws that guarantee educational environments free from sex discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The Department of Education has affirmed that federal civil rights laws protect all students, including transgender and other LGBTQI+ students, from discrimination, and reaffirmed its commitment to vigorously enforcing those laws. The Department of Justice, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services issued a joint message for transgender students about their rights.

Strengthening civil rights protections. The Biden-Harris Administration has strengthened civil rights protections for transgender Americans by:

Signing the Respect for Marriage Act. President Biden championed and signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, requiring that same-sex and interracial marriages be recognized as legal in every state in the nation.

Fighting for passage of the Equality Act. President Biden continues to call on Congress to pass the Equality Act, legislation which will confirm long overdue explicit federal civil rights protections to LGBTQI+ Americans and their families.

Ensuring transgender Americans can access accurate IDs and vital government services. The Biden-Harris Administration is working to ensure that transgender Americans have equal access to important government services by:

Helping nonbinary workers who file employment discrimination complaints. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) implemented changes to make it easier for non-binary workers to accurately identify their gender identity when filing a charge of workplace discrimination.

Supporting transgender service members and veterans. President Biden has restored and strengthened protections for transgender service members and veterans by:

Ending restrictions for service members living with HIV. The Department of Defense updated its policy on service members living with HIV, ending the long-time ban on their ability to deploy and commission.

Addressing the crisis of homelessness among transgender Americans. The Biden-Harris Administration is working to ensure that all people, regardless of gender identity, can access safe and affordable housing by:

Enforcing fair housing protections that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, including gender identity. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) clarified that it would administer and enforce the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, including gender identity and sexual orientation. HUD is actively enforcing the Fair Housing Act. For example, HUD announced that it entered into a Consent Order with a housing owner and property manager to resolve allegations of gender identity discrimination made by a transgender tenant.

Promoting safe and equal access to housing and shelter for transgender people. HUD's Equal Access Rule requires equal access to HUD housing programs - including HUD-funded homeless shelters, housing providers and housing subject to HUD-insured mortgages - regardless of a person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. HUD has released materials to help people know their rights, and help housing and shelter providers ensure that transgender and gender non-conforming people are able to safely access shelter and housing.

Advancing health equity and expanding access to gender-affirming health care. The Biden-Harris Administration is advancing health equity for transgender Americans by:

Protecting transgender patients from health care discrimination. The Department of Health and Human Services is working to ensure that section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act-which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex-is interpreted and enforced in a way that protects LGBTQI+ Americans from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The Department is working to finalize implementing regulations to codify these protections.

Bolstering access to gender-affirming care. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved Colorado's efforts to enhance access to comprehensive gender-affirming care in the state's essential health benefit benchmark plan under the Affordable Care Act. The Health Resources and Services Administration released a letter encouraging Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program service providers to provide access to gender-affirming care and treatment services to transgender and gender diverse individuals with HIV.

Combatting HIV among transgender and gender diverse communities. The White House Office of National AIDS Policy launched a revised National HIV/AIDS Strategy and includes transgender and gender diverse communities as a priority population in the federal government's strategy to end the HIV epidemic. And the Health Resources and Services Administration released a letter encouraging Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program service providers to provide access to gender affirming care and treatment services to transgender and gender diverse individuals with HIV.

Partnering with transgender communities to end the mpox outbreak. To end the mpox outbreak, the White House National Mpox Response Team partnered with transgender-led organizations to improve access to services and vaccines for transgender and other gender diverse communities. The Administration also utilized flexibilities in HIV treatment and prevention, sexual health, mental health, and housing programs that increased access to mpox treatment and prevention for transgender people where they seek care and services.

Ensuring transgender patients can access birth control and other reproductive health care, including cancer screenings and treatment for HIV and other STIs. The Department of Health and Human Services strengthened the Title X family planning program by issuing new rules that requires family planning projects to provide inclusive care to LGBTQI+ persons, and prohibits discrimination against any client based on their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics, or marital status.

Providing health resources for transgender youth and their parents. The Department of Health and Human Services has issued new resources to support the health of transgender youth, including by providing a resource guide on gender-affirming care for youth and launching a new website that offers resources for transgender and LGBTQI+ youth, their parents, and providers.

Addressing anti-transgender violence. The Biden-Harris Administration is working to end the crisis of violence against transgender Americans - which disproportionately impacts transgender women and girls of color - by:

Department of Justice civil rights enforcement actions. In addition to the Alabama litigation reference above, the Department of Justice announced that it was launching a statewide civil investigation into conditions of confinement of prisoners held in Georgia's prisons, including an investigation of the prisons' efforts to protect transgender and intersex prisoners from sexual abuse by other prisoners and staff.

Ensuring non-discrimination protections in community safety programs. The Department of Justice announced new steps to ensure that prohibitions against sex discrimination contained in key community safety programs, including the Safe Streets Act, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, and the Victims of Crime Act also protect transgender individuals from discrimination based on their gender identity.

Honoring transgender Americans lost to violence. President Biden established the National Pulse Memorial to honor the lives lost, including transgender Americans, at the Pulse nightclub shooting and to raise awareness about the impact of gun violence on LGBTQI+ communities. The Administration also hosted a first ever vigil at the White House to honor the lives of transgender and gender diverse people lost to anti-trans violence.

Advancing transgender equality at home and around the world. The Biden-Harris Administration has made LGBTQI+ equality a cornerstone of the U.S. government's foreign policy priorities by:

Ensuring that the U.S. global response to gender-based violence is trans-inclusive. The Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development released the 2022 U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, directing U.S. foreign policy and assistance to address the factors that increase the risks of gender-based violence and undermine access to services and safety, and to address the unique ways that LGBTQI+ people, and especially transgender people, are at risk of gender-based violence.

Hosting the UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity for an Official Visit to the United States. The United States hosted the UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity for an official visit to the United States to address discrimination and violence against the LGBTQI+ community.

Supporting transgender public servants. The Biden-Harris Administration is ensuring that transgender Americans are leaders at all levels of our government by:

Supporting a federal workplace where all employees' gender identities and expressions are affirmed and respected without fear of discrimination, retribution or disadvantage. In June 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order directing historic new steps to ensure the Federal government is a model employer for all Americans and individuals of all gender identities, including transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary employees.

Appointing historic transgender leaders. The Biden-Harris Administration includes barrier-breaking transgender leaders, including the two first openly transgender people to ever be confirmed by the U.S. Senate: Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Rachel Levine, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness Shawn Skelly.

Ensuring transgender Americans are counted in federal data. The Biden-Harris Administration is improving the collection of data on gender identity and sexual orientation - while respecting the privacy and safety of transgender Americans - by:

Releasing a roadmap to improve LGBTQI+ data collection. The Administration released the first-ever Federal Evidence Agenda on LGBTQI+ Equity, a roadmap that federal agencies will use to ensure they are collecting the data and evidence they need to improve the lives of transgender and other LGBTQI+ Americans.

Adding gender identity questions to vital surveys. The Administration has increased funding to add sexual orientation and gender identity questions to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, one of our nation's largest and most important surveys of American households.

Promoting visibility and inclusion for transgender Americans. President Biden became the first U.S. President to issue a proclamation commemorating Transgender Day of Visibility. The White House has consistently uplifted the voices and stories of transgender Americans. The White House Press Secretary hosted a first-of-its-kind national conversation on equality with transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary Americans, and the White House released a toolkit with best practices for advancing inclusion, opportunity, and safety for transgender Americans. In 2022, Ashton Mota, a teenager and advocate for transgender rights, introduced President Biden at the White House's Pride celebration.

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FACT SHEET: White House Honors Transgender Day of Visibility | The White House

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Today, in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility, the Biden-Harris Administration is uplifting transgender communities-and especially transgender kids and their families-by celebrating their resilience in the face of hateful anti-transgender laws being advanced across the country. Since President Biden's first day in office, the Administration has taken historic steps to advance equality, dignity, and safety...

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Moving towards equality all over the world. It talks about how being gay in other countries could cause them to jail or death. 

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Moving towards equality all over the world. It talks about how being gay in other countries could cause them to jail or death. 

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Kenneth Roth Former Executive Director kenroth kenroth

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Human Rights Watch is an organisation that monitors governments around the world for abuse, operating in 90 countries. Kenneth Roth started his career as an attorney, but joined Human Rights Watch in 1987 and has been its Executive Director since 1993. Ten years ago he oversaw the creation of a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights programme, and here he looks back on how LGBT rights have changed over that era.

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Creating a safe place and creating a welcoming community within the school. 

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Creating a safe place and creating a welcoming community within the school. 

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Teachers have many responsibilities, but chief among them is making sure that students feel safe.

But far too many LGBTQ students feel unsafe and unwelcome at their schools. More than 59 percent of LGBTQ students feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, GLSEN says, and nearly 45 percent feel unsafe because of their gender expression. When students don't feel safe or welcome, they're less likely to learn, more likely to act out, and far more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression.
Further Reading: 5 Inspirational Books for Teachers in the Last Months of School
Even one positive role model at school could dramatically improve a suffering student's situation. You could be that role model by creating a safe, welcoming environment for your LGBTQ students.

Educate Yourself

The first step you can take to help students feel safe and welcome is to educate yourself.

"Figure out what you know and what you don't know, then start reading about LGBTQ issues in schools now," said Keygan Miller, a licensed special education teacher and a senior advocacy associate with The Trevor Project.

There are many more ways you could continue your education. If your school sponsors a gay-straight alliance program, you could become a member or take a leadership role. You could also brainstorm ideas with your colleagues or ask veteran teachers for advice and wisdom.

"There are a ton of resources for educators and books written on LGBTQ topics in education," Miller said. "If you are given the opportunity to research some of these issues as part of your studies, take it."

Plan Inclusive Activities

Many teachers start the school year by getting to know their students. Fun and silly icebreaker activities can be a great way to build rapport and forge long-lasting bonds.

Just be sure that you've designed your activities with everyone in mind.

Start the year by having students fill out cards with the name they go by and the pronouns they use. (Note: Don't ask for a student's "preferred" name or pronouns. These are more than a preference.)

Use nongendered language during icebreakers and while managing your classroom. For example, you could divide children into groups by birthday instead of by gender. And strive to grow your relationship with every student. Don't let the bonds you started stagnate as the year rolls on.

When students see you take the initiative to include everyone, they feel more comfortable in the classroom and are more involved in learning.

Take a Stand on Bullying

Bullying is a sad-but-common reality in schools across the country. About 20% of students are bullied, according to stopbullying.gov.

Unfortunately, LGBTQ students are far more likely to be bullied at school:

About one-third of LGBTQ youth have been physically threatened or harmed because of their identity, The Trevor Project's National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health 2020 reports.

More than 52 percent of LGBTQ students reported hearing homophobic remarks from teachers and other school staff, according to GLSEN's 2019 National School Climate Survey.

The key to tackling bullying in your classroom is to set a precedent.

"Do not tolerate bullying; biases, overt and subversive; microaggressions; and other problematic behaviors in your classroom," Miller said. "How you address these issues will be different from teacher to teacher, but it is important to make it known that this behavior is unacceptable and will have a specific consequence."

Consequences should reflect the nature of the incident. Sometimes, a simple conversation is enough; other situations might require more severe reprimands. The important thing is to let kids know that bullying won't be tolerated.

Be LGBTQ-Positive with Your Curriculum

Imagine going through 12 years of school learning things you know others relate to but don't apply to you. LGBTQ students don't have to imagine it-it's part of their reality.

As you strive to make your classroom more welcoming, think about ways you can integrate positive LGBTQ material into your lesson plans. Subjects like language arts, history, health, and art are just a few areas where you could seamlessly integrate LGTBQ people and topics into your curriculum. Try reading popular LGBTQ literature or studying a significant event from the history of the gay rights movement.

This a great way to acknowledge every student, and it's also an opportunity to enhance your teaching practice.

Encourage Healthy Social Relationships

Teachers play a significant role in students' lives, but most students-especially teenagers-look to their peers for validation. This might be especially true for LGBTQ students, who might feel the need to change how they act or who they are to be accepted.

Building a classroom culture around healthy socialization is another way you can help students feel safe and welcome.

Assign group projects, change up teams frequently, and give students opportunities to show off their gifts when you can. For example, you could name someone in each group the expert on a subject or loosen guidelines on certain assignments so children can explore their creativity in a team dynamic.

Practice Makes Perfect

"It is so important to create safe, affirming learning environments where LGBTQ youth can thrive," Miller said. "Our recent research has found that LGBTQ youth who reported having at least one LGBTQ-affirming space had 35% reduced odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the past year-the strongest association being with LGBTQ-affirming schools."

LGBTQ youth are 40 percent less likely to commit suicide if they have even one accepting adult influence in their life, The Trevor Project reports.
Further Reading: Strategies to Bring Diversity Into the Classroom
Take a second to acknowledge your impact on your students' lives. It's powerful-if sometimes overwhelming-to take stock of how much you can really do. As responsible, loving role models, teachers have a duty to integrate open, caring habits. Educate yourself and practice making every student feel safe and welcome until it feels like second nature.

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Creating Safe, Welcoming Environments for LGBTQ Students

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Teachers have many responsibilities, but chief among them is making sure that students feel safe. But far too many LGBTQ students feel unsafe and unwelcome at their schools. More than 59 percent of LGBTQ students feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, GLSEN says, and nearly 45 percent feel unsafe because of their gender expression.

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This short reading goes over the global rights of the LGTBQ community members in other countries. It shows that this is a globalization matter.

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This short reading goes over the global rights of the LGTBQ community members in other countries. It shows that this is a globalization matter.

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10 Pages Posted: 4 Aug 2022

Date Written: July 14, 2022

Abstract

This paper analysis the role of Globalization in the transformation of sexual and gender identities. Globalization influenced all aspects of life, including the construction and perception of sexual and gender identity and the traditional gender relations were transformed because of global exchange of ideas about alternative sexual identities. These changes were also acknowledged and recognized by international platform, United Nations, which passed several resolutions to protect such sexual minorities which is referred to as 'LGBT' community in this paper. Towards the end, this research paper will examine the Indian scenario and how Indian laws were amended to safeguard such sexual minorities.

Keywords: LGBT rights, globalisation, gender identity, human rights

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10 Pages Posted: 4 Aug 2022 Date Written: July 14, 2022 This paper analysis the role of Globalization in the transformation of sexual and gender identities. Globalization influenced all aspects of life, including the construction and perception of sexual and gender identity and the traditional gender relations were transformed because of global exchange of ideas about alternative sexual identities.

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Global fight for inequality of the LGTBQ community

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Global fight for inequality of the LGTBQ community

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The Dislocation of LGBT Politics: Pride, Globalization, and Geo-Temporality in Uganda and Serbia

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Abstract. Scholars consider the translatability and efficacy of “western” LGBT politics as they diffuse, but pay little attention to the role of its histories a

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This article goes over statics that LGTBQ youth member faces. It talks about the bills that have been made to help with protecting LGTBQ members, but it states that they aren't a popular issue. 

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This article goes over statics that LGTBQ youth member faces. It talks about the bills that have been made to help with protecting LGTBQ members, but it states that they aren't a popular issue. 

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Thanks to the steadfast efforts of advocates, lawmakers, social service providers, and individuals able to live openly and proudly, the LGBTQ struggle for social equality in the United States has seen a dramatic improvement over the past decade. Issues such as marriage equality and the open service of LGBTQ men and women in the armed forces have support from the majority of Americans. The increased visibility of the trans community has encouraged many activists, communities and businesses to push back against discriminatory laws targeting trans people. However, the overall LGBTQ rights movement has many miles to go to achieve full equality. LGBTQ people still encounter consistent threats to their safety and security beginning at a young age. Compared to the general youth population, LGBTQ youth are more likely to struggle with depression, develop suicidal thoughts, contract HIV, become homeless and experience physical violence.

As we recognize Pride Month this June, let's reflect on critical issues that young LGBTQ people continue to face as they navigate one of the most challenging times in their lives.

LGBTQ youth are much more likely to struggle with depression and to attempt suicide than the rest of the population. Family, community and public support are all important early intervention factors in ensuring that LGBTQ youth can live happy, healthy and complete lives.

There are more than 1 million Americans currently living with HIV. Gay and bisexual men, who represent about 2 percent of the U.S. population, account for about 62 percent of the 50,000 new infections every year. For this group, early intervention in the form of early testing, education and consistent treatment is critical.

Institutional, cultural and interpersonal discrimination are the root causes of violence toward LGBTQ individuals. Although discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people is unacceptable, members of this community remain at higher risk of being victims of these crimes. Workplaces, schools and public services such as banking, renting or buying a home, and going to a shopping mall can be sources of discrimination and threats to the LGBTQ community. The best early intervention methods are policy changes and clear stances by elected officials that can curb widespread discrimination and violence faced by LGBTQ individuals in almost every facet of their lives.

According to various sources, an estimated 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBTQ. Many of these young people enter a downward spiral that often begins with rejection by their families, followed by couch surfing and transitory living, and ultimately homelessness. Homelessness can be particularly difficult for LGBTQ people, who often experience discrimination or abuse in shelters. This is particularly true for transgender people, who are often denied housing or evicted from their homes because of their gender identity.

The LGBTQ community is often depicted as a single group with a shared communal experience. However, transgender individuals face unique challenges. Much of the research conducted on the overall LGBTQ community focuses on LGB data and does not accurately reflect the realities that transgender people face. In fact, trans people are often at much higher risk of encountering violence, becoming homeless, experiencing mental health issues and being exposed to HIV.

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Effectively addressing systemic problems related to LGBTQ youth will require buy-in from lawmakers at the local, state and federal levels. Many lawmakers throughout the country are fighting to pass legislation that would protect the LGBTQ community. U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, of Colorado, lists initiatives on his website that are significant to LGBTQ rights, including bills that have been introduced. Unfortunately, most bills that would make a difference in the lives of LGBTQ people are not tied to a popular issue like marriage equality and die during the legislative process without much press. Backlash to major victories for the LGBTQ rights movement also presents dilemmas. Some legislators have recently introduced bills at the state and federal levels that would deny basic protections to LGBTQ people and legally allow discrimination against members of this community. Most recently, legislation designed to prevent transgender individuals from using bathrooms that correspond to their gender have been introduced throughout the country, with the clash spilling over into federal courts. The cases highlight the need for non-discrimination laws to protect this communities' rights in public accommodations, as well as in employment, education, health care and housing, where they continue to face insecurity.

Constituent pressure on elected officials can help push back against anti-LGBTQ bills and create momentum for pieces of legislation that would positively affect LGBTQ people. However, the LGBTQ community and LGBTQ youth cannot wait for lawmakers to act. Social workers, social service providers, health practitioners, schools and shelters will need to be forward thinking as they continue to develop new interventions specifically designed to address the unique needs of young LGBTQ people.

Feel free to share our infographics. When doing so, please include sourcing to "the MSW@USC, the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work's online Master of Social Work program."

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Forward Thinking: Addressing Threats to LGBTQ Youth Safety and Security

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Compared to the general youth population, LGBTQ youth are more likely to struggle with depression, develop suicidal ideation, contract HIV, become homeless and experience physical violence. As we celebrate Pride Month this June, let's reflect on critical issues that young LGBTQ people continue to face as they navigate one of the most challenging times in their lives.

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Sixteen ways to build a safe environment when fostering LGTBQ-identified foster youth.

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Sixteen ways to build a safe environment when fostering LGTBQ-identified foster youth.

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Healthcare disparities and access challenges

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Healthcare disparities and access challenges

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Editor's note: Connor Wesley, RN, BSN, is a registered nurse in Tacoma, WA. In addition to his role as the Assistant Nurse Manager of the Emergency Department at MultiCare Allenmore Hospital, Connor lectures locally and nationally on providing healthcare to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) community. We interviewed Connor to discuss patient safety and the LGBTQ+ community.

Sarah Mossburg: Welcome, Connor. Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself and describe your current role?

Connor Wesley: I am a nurse and have been a nurse for almost 10 years. I am the Assistant Nurse Manager of the Emergency Department at MultiCare Allenmore Hospital. I started in oncology before moving to the emergency room. I am also a graduate student at the University of Washington in the doctorate of nursing practice program studying to become a family nurse practitioner. In addition to my own life experience, my passion for this topic began when I was a nursing student where we received very little education on the LGBTQ+ community, particularly the transgender community, which is more my area of focus. I decided to create a lecture to fill the gap and started giving the lecture to the nursing students while I was still a nursing student. I have been lecturing locally and nationally since then.

Sarah Mossburg: Today we are talking about the LGBTQ+ community and patient safety. What do you think are some of the key patient safety issues that the LGBTQ+ community faces?

Connor Wesley: It can depend on location. There are places in the country that may be less safe for LGBTQ+ folks to live their normal lives and access healthcare. In the United States, we have the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, which legally requires that anyone who needs emergency care, receive it until they are stabilized. There are additional laws in place in select states that affect access to other types of care. For instance, Arkansas recently passed a law to make it a felony for young trans people under the age of 18 to access gender-affirming care because they view gender-affirming care as not evidence-based, but experimentation.

Nationally, there are some legal protections for people who are LGBTQ+. For example, in June of 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that members of the LGBTQ+ community cannot be fired from a job for being LGBTQ+. But that only relates to employment, there are different laws for housing-there are 27 states where housing discrimination can exist for being LGBTQ+ because there are no explicit protections for the LGBTQ+ community When living in a state where being LGBTQ+ can result in loss of housing, it can become even more unsafe to access healthcare. When we talk to our healthcare providers, we talk to them about our biggest stressors because we know that they impact health. When you live in one of those 27 states, you may avoid talking about sexual orientation and gender because of the fear of potentially losing housing because it is not protected.

The LGBTQ+ community faces a great deal of health disparities, and a lot of that is rooted in stigma and general views of society about the LGBTQ+ community. That stigma eats away at you. Lack of representation can also eat away at you. Young people need representation to feel like they can be successful in life as adults. For the LGBTQ+ community, not being able to see yourself as a successful adult reflected in somebody else means you don't believe that you can be a successful adult. It can cause maladaptive behaviors. We see higher levels of smoking, drinking, and obesity. As many as 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+ We see a lot more homelessness, which leads to things like participating in survival sex, or using sex in exchange for safety, housing, food, and basic needs.

All of these things lead to our massive health disparities. Healthcare may not necessarily be a safe space because providers are human and some providers either don't recognize or struggle to avoid bringing their bias into their practice. There are invalidations that providers may not realize they are saying based on the power of their words. For example, misgendering people, or choosing not to use names that patients have asked you to use. Another example is when gay mothers take their kids to the doctor and are asked, who is the mom? These things have so much power that I do not think people always realize. Ultimately, as providers, our job is to recognize our biases and overcome them, but many people struggle to avoid bringing their bias into their practice. When that happens, accessing healthcare and expecting to actually get the healthcare LGBTQ+ patients need becomes difficult.

When I give my lectures, I hear comments from people talking about colleagues that don't want to use a patient's name or pronouns because they do not want to enable something that goes against their beliefs of normal. When it comes to healthcare though, their beliefs of normal shouldn't interfere with someone's ability to get care. And ultimately, all of this leads to people not wanting to access healthcare. In these cases, easily managed health needs like high blood pressure or diabetes can progress to acute and potentially life-threatening medical conditions.

There are other challenges in accessing healthcare and identifying providers. The documentary "Southern Comfort" shares the story of Robert Eads, a trans man who lived in Georgia, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but he could not find an oncologist to treat him. Providers were afraid that their other patients would not want to receive care from a provider that would care for a trans man. By the time he was able to find a provider to care for him, his cancer was too far progressed and he died from ovarian cancer three years later.

Healthcare can be a really scary place for a lot of people. Even I get scared about accessing healthcare, and I am a nurse. I have a great provider and I work in the emergency room. If I need emergency care, I go to the emergency room where I work. I can't imagine going anywhere else, because I am trans and am unsure about the care I would receive elsewhere. I had a health issue at work the other day that required me to check into the emergency room, and even in those moments I have anxiety because my coworkers and the providers I work with are accessing my electronic medical record (EMR). When I tell somebody that I am trans-when I get to come out to them-I get to see their reaction. I get to make sure I know that I'm still safe, and that relationship is still okay. But when someone is reading my chart and I do not see that reaction, I do not know what their feelings are. Further, our EMRs follow us everywhere and can include hurtful words. I know my EMR includes the word "transgenderism," which many people consider to be offensive because it suggests that you prescribe to a set of ideals or beliefs, rather than this is just who you are. In these cases, healthcare is still very fallible.

Sarah Mossburg: Some of the key things that I hear you talking about in relation to the patient safety and the LGBTQ+ community, are that it's contextual in terms of region and location in the United States, that care is politicized, and that there is an extreme amount of discrimination across sexual and gender orientations. There is also a significant amount of disparities related to stigma among them, and that there are significant challenges related to emotional, psychological, and physical safety when pursuing and receiving care in healthcare settings. Finally, that there are a lot of downstream effects that lead to poor outcomes among members of this community. You described some challenges in accessing care and issues when in the hospital or different care settings. What about post-care patient safety issues? Do you see any potential patient safety issues in that part of the healthcare continuum?

Connor Wesley: I think challenges with post-care is a result of what happens in care or when appropriate care is not received despite a healthcare visit. A lot of the fear that LGBTQ+ have when going to providers is-am I going to be seen as a human? Am I going to get the care I need? People may go to a provider because they have an injury or concern, and providers can only focus on their gender presentation and neglect to talk about a presenting condition like a broken arm. In these cases, members of the LGBTQ+ community are not receiving appropriate care, which results in still having a care need.

There is also that trauma of accessing care and feeling that bias and stigma, which can prevent patients from accessing care the next time. It is like a snowball effect-not getting the care needed, or not being treated in a respectful way-leads LGBTQ+ patients to avoid accessing healthcare and getting potentially sicker and sicker. Many trans and nonbinary patients will seek safe emergency rooms and if there are none, then will avoid care and their health issues are not being dealt with.

Some LGBTQ+ people, trans people in particular, cannot access the healthcare that they want or need, or aren't able to afford it. Federal changes in legislation affect what insurance companies do and do not pay for. Not all insurance companies cover gender-affirming care, such as sex reassignment surgery.Some employers pay for extra components their insurance plans offer to cover gender-affirming care, but the majority do not. Hormones are expensive and most people will need to pay for them out of pocket.

Sarah Mossburg: The LGBTQ+ community describes a broad group of people that have differing challenges and needs when it comes to their health-what are some of the specific challenges or needs that are sometimes overlooked that could result in patient safety issues and adverse events?

Connor Wesley: Yes, being part of the LGBTQ+ community is like a tiny window. It's this tiny window of who we are as people, but can color how the majority of the world sees us. I am trans, but I also have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I was seen in the emergency room that I work in, because I went into atrial fibrillation, and had to be cardioverted to get my heart to beat regularly again. Because I'm trans, if I were somewhere else in the world, or in this country, I may not have felt safe to go to the hospital to get that taken care of.

One thing commonly done in healthcare is trans-care hormone replacement therapy. It is done for cisgender women and men who have low testosterone. It is not specialty care, but because patients are in the LGBTQ+ community, people think that our healthcare is specialized. Another example is cancer screenings. When screening for the human papillomavirus (HPV), it is often based on sexual interaction, but providers are often too uncomfortable to ask questions about what types of sex someone is having. While these are simple, although awkward questions, answers will inform if a provider has to worry about if a patient could have HPV.

There may not be true specialized care for the LGBTQ+ community because the things that we do are generally no different than the things people do outside the LGBTQ+ community. Members of the LGBTQ+ community tend to be more open about sexual orientation and gender identity because they may be under so much scrutiny. It's the ability to open your mind and see the human in front of you as the components that make up that human-whether they're cisgender or transgender, heterosexual or queer-there is no special care for our community.

Sarah Mossburg: We talked about the issues and challenges facing this community. How can healthcare systems address patient safety issues?

Connor Wesley: One way to address patient safety is by allowing a person to be seen as who they are and who they love. Many EMRs have sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) screens that asks about sexual orientation, which can be important in healthcare. SOGI screens also ask for the name the patient uses versus the name they have, and the pronouns they use. These screens can also include an organ inventory, which every patient would benefit from. Sadly, it is not often used. I once went to urgent care and needed a chest x ray completed. Part of a typical x ray screening is asking if there's any chance you could be pregnant. That would have been a great time to do an organ inventory and find out if people even need to ask this question in the future. I do still have a uterus. So yes, people need to ask me that question.

The trans and queer community are ever evolving. We are learning more and more about ourselves, and growing, and changing, and new terms are coming out, and so our language continues to change. We are working on not saying preferred pronouns and preferred name, because preferred implies a preference, not just asking who you are. When I first came out in the 1990s, we used bio-man and bio-woman, instead of cisgender, because the term cisgender didn't exist yet in our vocabulary. Now we would never use bio-man or bio-woman because it implies that someone who isn't biologically male will never be truly male, for example.

Other ways of being supportive include showing overt signs of support to represent that healthcare is a safe space. If all of the imaging in your organization is of straight, white people, only straight, white people are truly going to feel safe in your organization. If your pamphlets don't show people of color, if your pamphlets don't show varying sexual orientations or implied potential sexual orientations, people don't see themselves safe there. Members of the LGBTQ+ community need to see signs that they matter so they can feel safe. For example, I have on my hospital identification badge a heart shaped pride flag. We also have pronoun stickers so that everyone can put their pronouns on their badge, so that people feel safe. Many people have a hard time asking patients what their pronouns are because they feel uncomfortable and awkward about it. Having pronouns available or introducing yourself with pronouns shows that you understand that pronouns matter, and it's safe to share them with me.

Clinicians can still have a hard time asking trans men about being pregnant whether it comes to surgery or imaging, but I think education needs to happen on both sides of that fence. The trans community is a traumatized community that is used to people asking from a place of curiosity, and not from a place of care. That trauma hinders the ability to sometimes see when people, like clinicians, are asking for the right reasons, and not for the wrong reasons. In the 1990s and early 2000s, people asked about my genitalia on a regular basis. I had so much internalized shame that I answered those questions and did not set boundaries with those people. I did not feel empowered to say that is a really inappropriate question.

I think, as trans men we need to be more comfortable with parts of our bodies that we wish we didn't have and recognize that providers asking if there's any chance you could be pregnant is not a reflection of your gender identity. It's not a reflection of the man that you are. It is a reflection of the body you have and wanting to be open to how you choose to use that body.

Another thing is to always understand the why, when asking your patients questions. The number one thing I can tell providers is to make your intentions of support clear. Tell your patients that you are here to support them. I know that people have a huge problem with using they/them pronouns. That is universal. Nobody is good at it right out of the gate. If your patient uses they/them pronouns, tell them that you absolutely support who they are as a human being and be direct that you are not good at using they/them pronouns, but are working on it. Say that if I make a mistake, please correct me, if I do not correct myself.

People often hold a lot of tension in our bodies when we are uncomfortable, whether it is because of our own failures or because we are uncomfortable with the situation we are in. When we read the body language of someone else we do not know, we will never be able to read their intentions. We can only read the body language. I can see tension in somebody's body very easily, but I will never understand the reason without them telling me. As a provider, your body language may be tense because you are afraid of making a mistake or hurting my feelings in some way, not because you are uncomfortable with me being trans. I need to hear that. Always making those intentions of support clear with your patients is important.

Sarah Mossburg: You've done a great job talking about how care needs to be patient-centered, how communication is so critical in terms of helping people understand what your intentions are, and why you are asking the questions that you are asking. I know that psychological safety is also a really critical condition to ensure safe patient outcomes. How can providers foster psychological safety when caring for patients who are LGBTQ+?

Connor Wesley: Understand your why when asking questions. Avoid making assumptions about people and their families, or what cancer screenings they need to have. Ask the awkward questions. Figure out how to ask the awkward questions, because you could potentially miss something important in your patient's health. Asking trans men if there is any chance you could be pregnant, and stating that this is absolutely no reflection of your gender, but a reflection of the organs in your body. In those moments of discomfort, always making those intentions of support clear and those intentions of understanding is helpful.

The bottom line is understanding that supporting the LGBTQ+ community in healthcare is no different than the way you support the heterosexual, cisgender human. Patient-centered care should always be how we provide care, and representation matters to everybody. Not specific to the LGBTQ+ community, but to everybody in a community, representation matters. We are humans and this tiny thing that is different about us does not need to take up so much space in the world. It doesn't need to be our whole care. This community needs to be seen as people-every November 20th is the Transgender Day of Remembrance to honor the people in the trans community that were murdered because of their gender identity.

There is so much stigma. Meyers devised the Minority Stress Model specifically for the LGBTQ+ community. This model describes how stigma, internalized homophobia versus external homophobia, and family rejection impacts your mental and physical health.

We all have hearts, we all have people we love, we all are beings trying to get through this world with the least amount of trauma that we can, and ideally creating the most amount of good we can. We just want to be seen as humans, so that we can get our blood pressure managed on a regular basis. I am trans, but I am also a grad student. A manager of an emergency department. I am a twin. A dog parent of three. I am a million different things. But the thing I talk about most is being trans because it is the thing that people do not understand the most.

Sarah Mossburg: Do you have any thoughts about next steps in this work or other areas of research that should be pursued in this space?

Connor Wesley: There is not a lot of research done on the LGBTQ+ community because we're so small. We can do more research on gender-affirming care and youth. Because so many states are starting to make it a felony, we need research to show that gender-affirming care is life-affirming care. Any research that will help the world see us as humans.

Sarah Mossburg: That's great. Thank you for taking this time to talk with us.

Editor's note: In this interview we use LGBTQ+ to describe the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning community. The "+" represents those who are part of the community, but not reflected by LGBTQ. There are many variations of this acronym used in other resources. Transgender refers to people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth (sometimes abbreviated as trans). The term transgender woman (or trans woman) refers to a woman assigned male at birth; transgender man ( or trans man) refers to a man assigned female at birth. Cisgender describes people who are not transgender and whose gender is aligned with the sex assigned at birth (sometimes abbreviated as cis). Pronouns are words that are used to refer to a person other than their name; pronouns are viewed as essential, not preferred. Gender-affirming care refers to care and surgical procedures that can help people adjust their bodies to match their gender identity.

. Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA). Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Updated December 5, 2022. Accessed December 7, 2022. https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EMTALA

. HB1570 - To Create the Arkansas Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act. Arkansas State Legislature 93 rd General Assembly - Regular Session 2021. Accessed December 7, 2022. https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/Detail?id=HB1570&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R

. Bostock V. Clayton County, Georgia, 590 US 1 (2020).

. Freedom for All Americans. LGBTQ Americans Aren't Fully Protected From Discrimination in 29 States. Accessed December 7, 2022. https://freedomforallamericans.org/states/

. True Colors United. Our issue. Accessed November 14, 2022. https://truecolorsunited.org/our-issue/

. Walls NE, Bell S. Correlates of engaging in survival sex among homeless youth and young adults. J Sex Res. 2011;48(5):423-436. doi:10.1080/00224499.2010.501916

. Southern Comfort. Next Wave Films. Accessed December 7, 2022. https://nextwavefilms.com/southern/index.html

. Bouman WP. Sumamus exordio: International Journal of Transgender Health. Int J Transgend Health. 2020;21(1):1-2. Published 2020 Jan 8. doi:10.1080/15532739.2020.1709316

. Transgender health care. Department of Health and Human Services. Accessed December 7, 2022. https://www.healthcare.gov/transgender-health-care/

. The Joint Commission. Advancing Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient- and Family-Centered Care for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Community: A Field Guide. The Joint Commission; 2011. https://www.jointcommission.org/-/media/tjc/documents/resources/patient-safety-topics/health-equity/lgbtfieldguide_web_linked_verpdf.pdf

. Meyer IH. Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychol Bull. 2003;129(5):674-697. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.674

. Sexual & gender minority: Terms and definitions. National Institutes of Health. Accessed December 7, 2022. https://www.edi.nih.gov/people/sep/lgbti/safezone/terminology

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Patient Safety Concerns and the LGBTQ+ Population | PSNet

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Editor's note: Connor Wesley, RN, BSN, is a registered nurse in Tacoma, WA. In addition to his role as the Assistant Nurse Manager of the Emergency Department at MultiCare Allenmore Hospital, Connor lectures locally and nationally on providing healthcare to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) community.

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There is protection where one can not be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation and gender identity at the job. 

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There is protection where one can not be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation and gender identity at the job. 

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On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its landmark decision in the case Bostock v. Clayton County,[1] which held that the prohibition against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) includes employment discrimination against an individual on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status.

This fact sheet briefly explains what the Bostock decision means for LGBTQ+ workers (and all covered workers) and for employers across the country. It also explains the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC or Commission) established legal positions on LGBTQ+-related matters, as voted by the Commission. Before Bostock, the Commission decided an array of matters involving employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. For example, the EEOC has authority under Title VII to decide employment discrimination appeals by employees of the federal government and, in 2012, decided that discrimination against an applicant for federal employment based on gender identity is discrimination based on sex.[2] In 2015, in a federal sector matter involving a decision not to permanently hire an individual, the Commission decided that sexual orientation discrimination states a claim of sex discrimination under Title VII.[3] More recently, the Commission also applied the Bostock decision in the federal sector.[4]

This information is not new policy. This publication in itself does not have the force and effect of law and is not meant to bind the public in any way. It is intended only to provide clarity to the public regarding existing requirements under the law.
1. What happened in the Bostock case?
The Bostock case involved a trio of cases alleging discrimination against LGBTQ+ workers, which the Supreme Court decided together in a single opinion. Gerald Bostock, a child welfare services coordinator, was fired after his employer learned he had joined a gay softball league. Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor, was fired after his employer learned he was gay. In a case filed by the EEOC, funeral director Aimee Stephens was fired after her employer learned that she was going to transition from male to female. In deciding these cases, the Supreme Court held that employment discrimination based on sexual orientation (Bostock and Zarda) or transgender status (Aimee Stephens) is discrimination "because of sex," and is therefore unlawful under Title VII.

The Supreme Court in Bostock recognized that to discriminate against a person based on sexual orientation or transgender status is to discriminate against that individual based on sex. Therefore, the Supreme Court held that Title VII makes it unlawful for a covered employer to take an employee's sexual orientation or transgender status into account in making employment-related decisions. The Court explicitly reserved some issues for future cases.
2. Does Title VII protect all workers?
Title VII protects job applicants, current employees (including full-time, part-time, seasonal, and temporary employees), and former employees, if their employer has 15 or more employees. Employers with fewer than 15 total employees are not covered by Title VII.

Title VII protects employees regardless of citizenship or immigration status, in every state, the District of Columbia, and the United States territories.

Title VII generally does not apply to individuals who are found to be independent contractors. Figuring out whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor is a fact-specific inquiry. To find out more, see the EEOC's guidance on Threshold Issues.
3. Does Title VII apply to all employers?
Title VII applies to private-sector employers with 15 or more employees, to state and local government employers with 15 or more employees, and to the federal government as an employer. Title VII also applies to unions and employment agencies.

Title VII does not apply to Tribal nations. However, private employers with 15 or more employees are covered by the statute, even if they operate on a Tribal reservation.

Title VII allows "religious organizations" and "religious educational institutions" (those organizations whose purpose and character are primarily religious) to hire and employ people who share their own religion (in other words, it is not unlawful religious discrimination for a qualifying employer to limit hiring in this way). Courts also apply a "ministerial exception" that bars certain employment discrimination claims by the employees of religious institutions because those employees perform vital religious duties at the core of the mission of the religious institution. Courts and the EEOC consider and apply, on a case by case basis, any religious defenses to discrimination claims, under Title VII and other applicable laws. For more information on those defenses and other issues related to religious organizations and discrimination based on religion, see EEOC Compliance Manual, Section 12: Religious Discrimination.

Other defenses might also be available to employers depending on the facts of a particular case.
4. Does Title VII protect employees who work in places where state or local law does not prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity?
Yes. As a federal law, Title VII applies nationwide and protects employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity regardless of state or local laws.
5. What kind of discriminatory employment actions does Title VII prohibit?
Title VII includes a broad range of protections. Among other things, under Title VII employers cannot discriminate against individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity with respect to:

hiring

firing, furloughs, or reductions in force

promotions

demotions

discipline

training

work assignments

pay, overtime, or other compensation

fringe benefits

other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.

Discrimination also includes severe or pervasive harassment. It is unlawful for an employer to create or tolerate such harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Further, if an employee reports such harassment by a customer or client, the employer must take steps to stop the harassment and prevent it from happening again. For more information, visit the EEOC's harassment page at https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment.
6. Are non-LGBTQ+ job applicants and employees also protected against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination?
Yes-employers are not allowed to discriminate against job applicants or employees because the applicants or employees are, for example, straight or cisgender (someone whose gender identity corresponds with the sex assigned at birth). Title VII prohibits harassment and other forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
7. Could an employer's discriminatory action be justified by customer or client preferences?
No. As a general matter, an employer covered by Title VII is not allowed to fire, refuse to hire, or take assignments away from someone (or discriminate in any other way) because customers or clients would prefer to work with people who have a different sexual orientation or gender identity. Employers also are not allowed to segregate employees based on actual or perceived customer preferences. (For example, it would be discriminatory to keep LGBTQ+ employees out of public-facing positions, or to direct these employees toward certain stores or geographic areas.)
8. Is an employer allowed to discriminate against an employee because the employer believes the employee acts or appears in ways that do not conform to stereotypes about the way men or women are expected to behave?
No. Whether or not an employer knows an employee's sexual orientation or gender identity, employers are not allowed to discriminate against an employee because that employee does not conform to a sex-based stereotype about feminine or masculine behavior. For example, employers are not allowed to discriminate against men whom they perceive to act or appear in stereotypically feminine ways, or against women whom they perceive to act or appear in stereotypically masculine ways.
9. May a covered employer require a transgender employee to dress in accordance with the employee's sex assigned at birth?
No. Prohibiting a transgender person from dressing or presenting consistent with that person's gender identity would constitute sex discrimination.[5]
10. Does an employer have the right to have separate, sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, or showers for men and women?
Yes.Courts have long recognized that employers may have separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers for men and women, or may choose to have unisex or single-use bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers. The Commission has taken the position that employers may not deny an employee equal access to a bathroom, locker room, or shower that corresponds to the employee's gender identity.[6] In other words, if an employer has separate bathrooms, locker rooms, or showers for men and women, all men (including transgender men) should be allowed to use the men's facilities and all women (including transgender women) should be allowed to use the women's facilities.
11. Could use of pronouns or names that are inconsistent with an individual's gender identity be considered harassment?
Yes, in certain circumstances. Unlawful harassment includes unwelcome conduct that is based on gender identity. To be unlawful, the conduct must be severe or pervasive when considered together with all other unwelcome conduct based on the individual's sex including gender identity, thereby creating a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or offensive. In its decision in Lusardi v. Dep't of the Army,[7] the Commission explained that although accidental misuse of a transgender employee's preferred name and pronouns does not violate Title VII, intentionally and repeatedly using the wrong name and pronouns to refer to a transgender employee could contribute to an unlawful hostile work environment.

12. If a job applicant's or an employee's Title VII rights have been violated, what can the applicant or employee do?

For applicants and employees of private sector employers and state and local government employers, the individual can contact the EEOC for help in deciding what to do next. If the individual decides to file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC, the agency will conduct an investigation to determine if applicable Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws have been violated. Because an individual must file an EEOC charge within 180 days of the alleged violation in order to take further legal action (or 300 days if the employer is also covered by a state or local employment discrimination law), it is best to begin the process early.

For more information about filing a charge, visit https://www.eeoc.gov/how-file-charge-employment-discrimination. To begin the process of filing a charge of discrimination against a private company or a state or local government employer, go to the EEOC Online Public Portal at https://publicportal.eeoc.gov or visit your local EEOC office (see https://www.eeoc.gov/field-office for contact information). For general information, visit the EEOC website at https://www.eeoc.gov, or call 1-800-669-4000 (voice), 1-800-669-6820 (TTY), or 1-844-234-5122 (ASL Video Phone).

The U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) enforces regulations that prohibit certain federal contractors from engaging in employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, under Executive Order 11246, as amended. Executive Order 11246 applies to businesses with federal contracts and federally assisted construction contracts totaling more than $10,000. For more information, see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/lgbt and https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/jurisdictional-thresholds#Q2.

For applicants and employees of the federal government, the process for seeking legal redress for Title VII violations is different than the process that individuals in the private sector and state and local governments must use. Federal applicants and employees must first contact the EEO Office at the specific federal agency that they believe committed the unlawful employment discrimination. In general, federal applicants and employees must start this federal sector EEO process by contacting the relevant federal agency's EEO office to request EEO counseling. Most federal agencies list contact information for their internal EEO offices on their external agency website.

A federal applicant or employee generally must request EEO counseling from the appropriate agency within 45 calendar days of the date of the incident(s) the employee or applicant believes to be discriminatory. Failure to adhere to this time limitation could result in an individual forfeiting legal rights and remedies that otherwise would be available. Nevertheless, if a federal applicant or employee alleges that they were subjected to a hostile work environment, and at least one incident occurred within 45 calendar days of contacting an EEO counselor, then incidents occurring outside of the 45-calendar day window may still be considered for investigation.

Federal applicants and employees can also find out more information on the federal sector process for alleging employment discrimination on the EEOC's website here.

Other processes may be available for federal applicants and employees seeking relief for sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination, including filing grievances under applicable collective bargaining agreements and/or filing a prohibited personnel practice complaint under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

13. If I contact the EEOC or file a charge or complaint of discrimination, could I be fired?

It is unlawful for an employer to retaliate against, harass, or otherwise punish any employee for:

opposing employment discrimination that the employee reasonably believed was unlawful;

filing an EEOC charge or complaint;

or participating in any investigation, hearing, or other proceeding connected to Title VII enforcement.

Retaliation is anything that would be reasonably likely to discourage workers from making or supporting a charge of discrimination. To learn more about retaliation, see https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/enforcement-guidance-retaliation-and-related-issues.

[1] 590 U.S. ___, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020).

[2] In Macy v. Dep't of Justice, EEOC Appeal No. 0120120821 (Apr. 20, 2012), a Commission-voted decision involving an applicant for federal employment, the EEOC determined that transgender discrimination, including discrimination because an employee does not conform to gender norms or stereotypes, is sex discrimination in violation of Title VII based on a plain interpretation of the statutory language prohibiting discrimination because of sex. Specifically, the Commission explained that discrimination based on an employee's gender identity is sex discrimination "regardless of whether an employer discriminates against an employee [for expressing the employee's] gender in a non-stereotypical fashion, because the employer is uncomfortable with the fact that the person has transitioned or is in the process of transitioning from one gender to another, or because the employer simply does not like that the person is identifying as a transgender person."

[3] In Baldwin v. Dep't of Transp., EEOC Appeal No. 0120133080 (July 15, 2015), a Commission-voted decision involving a failure to permanently hire an individual as an air traffic controller, the Commission concluded that a claim alleging discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily states a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex under Title VII.

[4] See Bart M. v. Dep't of the Interior, EEOC Appeal No. 0120160543 (Jan. 14, 2021).

[5] See Macy v. Dep't of Justice, EEOC Appeal No. 0120120821 (Apr. 20, 2012).

[6] See Lusardi v. Dep't of the Army, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133395 (Apr. 1, 2015) (concluding in an EEOC decision involving a federal employee that Title VII is violated where an employer denies an employee equal access to a common restroom corresponding to the employee's gender identity).

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Protections Against Employment Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity

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On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its landmark decision in the case Bostock v. Clayton County,[1] which held that the prohibition against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) includes employment discrimination against an individual on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status.

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The movie The Stone Wall shows the best timeline of the community in my opinion. I highly recommend watching if anyone wants to learn more about the community. 

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The movie The Stone Wall shows the best timeline of the community in my opinion. I highly recommend watching if anyone wants to learn more about the community. 

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Chapter 1 | Stonewall Uprising | American Experience | PBS

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This is a great timeline of LGBTQ history. These are the major events that happened. I will say I learned some more information from this timeline.

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This is a great timeline of LGBTQ history. These are the major events that happened. I will say I learned some more information from this timeline.

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The LGTBQ community movements throughout the years

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The LGTBQ community movements throughout the years

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Take a walk through the history of the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement and discover the powerful editorial imagery that documented these moments in history.
This article has been approved by Prism, a Shutterstock ERG (Employee Resource Group) committed to creating a supportive, diverse, and inclusive company culture for LGBTQ+ people globally.
June is Pride Month in many countries around the world, a time to reflect on the feelings of joy and liberation that run concurrently with the feelings of unstoppable determination within the LGBTQ community.

Pride parades are a staple of the celebratory month in cities across the globe ever since the first gathering in New York in 1970. Attendees and participants revel in the joy of being unapologetically queer in a public space while also remembering the fight to do in decades past.

The 21st century, however, hasn't ushered away the feelings of inequality still commonly felt by the LGBTQ community. The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act" wasn't passed until 2010. The United Nations Human Rights Council only recognized rights for the LGBTQ community in 2011, and same-sex marriage wasn't legal until 2015. Only just this month (yes, in 2020) were LGBTQ employees granted rights of protection against discrimination in the workplace. Society is just starting to catch up.

Men, women, transgender, and nonbinary persons have fought for the last sixty years to be seen and treated just as straight, cisgender men and women. Realizing this boggles the mind when one also realizes equality for the community has only just started to fall in place on a governmental level in the 2010s. In a time when protesting and demonstrating for beloved causes and awareness is common, let's take a look back at some of the numerous public displays of activism held in the name of LGBTQ equality over the last six decades.

How the Fight for LGBTQ Rights Movement Began

While the 1969 Stonewall riots were a major turning point in the fight for LGBTQ rights, organizations dedicated to promoting rights within the community began as far back as the 1920s. The Society for Human Rights, formed in 1924, and the Mattachine Society, formed in 1950, were among the earliest societies created to promote gay rights and decry discrimination brought on by mainstream society. These organizations also existed during when various scientific fields and the United States government considered homosexuality a disease.

Toward the latter end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, demonstrations became the norm for protesters against the Vietnam War and for civil rights in the Black community. The LGBTQ community, battling police harassment on a daily basis, also began to take a stand in the name of their rights. The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States, was established in 1955 by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Cooper's Do-nuts Riot of 1 959 in Los Angeles was one of the first queer demonstrations in modern history. Trans women and drag queens resisted an attempted arrest, as cross-dressing was illegal at the time, and patrons pelted the authorities with donuts and coffee to give the detainees a chance to escape.

Documenting the LGBTQ Rights Movement

The historical importance of documenting LGBTQ+ rights is vital. Photojournalist Kay Tobin Lahusen captured queer history at an unbelievable magnitude, and her contributions can't be understated. Considered the first out photojournalist, Kay worked with her life partner Barbara Gittings, who is considered the mother of the gay rights movement in the USA. Together their fight for LGBTQ+ equality etched a permanent mark on LGBTQ storytelling in the world. Check out this article to learn more about Kay and Barbara, and their long fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

Famous LGBTQ+ Protests and Demonstrations Throughout the Years

Marginalized groups have long carried out protests in the face of frustration and anger. Standing up to the authorities, marching, chanting, using different mediums of art to voice displeasure, and riots make an impact. The LGBTQ+ community has consistently and courageously demanded equality over the last six decades using these tactics.

Annual Reminder Day Pickets

Established in 1965 by Craig Rodwell, Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings, Kay Tobin Lahusen, and NYC & DC Mattachine Societies, the Annual Reminders were a series of early pickets organized by LGBTQ organizations. The Reminder took place each July 4 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia beginning in 1965 and was among the earliest LGBT demonstrations in the United States.

The Julius "sip-in" (1966)

Three members of the New York chapter of the Mattachine Society, including organizer Dick Leitsch, visited the bar Julius' in New York City's West Village on April 21, 1969 in an effort to shed a light on the city's LGBTQ discrimination policy in bars and restaurants. Because groups of gay men were considered disorderly, they were often refused service.

Leitsch and the other two men entered the establishment and stated to the bartender that " We are homosexuals. We are orderly, we intend to remain orderly, and we are asking for service." The group was still refused service. Two lawsuits against the city followed the sip-in, ending the discriminatory practice of refusing gay men service in these spaces.

Compton's Cafeteria riot (1966)

Drag queens and trans women went head-to-head with members of the San Francisco Police Department during a night at Compton's Cafeteria in the city's Tenderloin District in August of 1966.

Cops attempted to arrest the patrons of Compton's Cafeteria, since "cross-dressing" was illegal at the time. The latter fought back, not giving up their right to frequent the business and fighting with authorities inside and outside of the eatery. An officer was even scalded with a hot cup of coffee during the confrontation.

Gene Compton, who owned Compton's Cafeteria, banned LGBTQ+ patrons from his restaurant following the clash. The community made sure to let him know how they felt about that by destroying his windows in the nights following the riot.

The Stonewall riots (1969)

The most famous LGBTQ demonstration and widely considered the birth of the fight for gay rights, the Stonewall riots took place in New York City's West Village on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, a neighborhood gay bar. Police raids in gay bars were common at the time. Following a raid at Stonewall that night, multiple fights broke out between police officers and patrons, among whom were gay men, trans women, lesbians, and drag queens. Patrons soon began to throw rocks, bottles, and bricks and the fights continued to escalate, resulting in riots and protests through July 3, 1969.

ACT UP's Stop the Church demonstration (1989)

In response to the Catholic church's policies and perspective on homosexuality and the HIV/ AIDS crisis of the 1980s and the 1990s, over 4,500 members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, stormed a service at New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral and interrupted the gathering to make their voices heard.

The church admonished homosexuality as a sin prior to the demonstration and taught abstinence instead of safe sex. Protesters laid in the aisles and handcuffed themselves to the cathedral's pews. Police arrested 111 people during the act.

A special note on this note, as the founder of ACT UP and prominent LGBTQ+ activist Larry Kramer passed away this year. We remember him for his incredible accomplishments for LGBTQ+ rights activism

The Ashes Action (1992 and 1996)

The U.S. government's non-urgent response to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s is well-documented in LGBTQ+ history. Over 400,000 people lost their lives due in part to the Reagan administration treating the disease as unimportant - refusing to say the word "AIDS" and laughing over questions about their inquiry into the health crisis. The issue was later compounded by the Clinton administration refusing to fund needle exchange programs.

In 1992, ACT UP took their long-held anger over the government's treatment of the disease to the front steps of the White House. The Ashes Action Protesters scattered the ashes of friends, lovers, and acquaintances on the White House lawn. The demonstration took place again in 1996.

Queer Liberation March (2019)

The Queer Liberation March took place in New York City during the 2019 WorldPride NYC celebration. This march was an attempt to get back to the roots of the fight for LGBTQ equality. Organizers and participants felt that the city's Pride Parade had become too much about corporate sponsors, partying, and increased police presence, the latter of which was always something the queer community has long resisted.

Forty-five thousand participants marched from Christopher Street to the Great Lawn in Central Park, retracing the steps of the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day March.

Iconic Pride Imagery and Its Importance in Both History and Today

Some of the most widely-recognized queer imagery came out of the protests and demonstrations held by the LGBTQ+ community. Art speaks volumes as visual tributes to important moments over time, and protest imagery is no different.

Famed images like the Silence=Death poster, created by the project of the same name, served as the message board for what the queer community wanted others to know.

Artist Avram Finkelstein, who co-founded the Silence=Death Project in 1986, recalled activism for the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s in conjunction with the poster's creation. He stated in a 2017 essay that "The poster perfectly suits the American ear. It has a power. [...] posters, demonstration flyers, and meeting announcements papered Eighth Street between the East and West Villages. It was how we found out what we needed to know, the things no media outlets would cover."

Keith Haring also produced his own version of the instantly-recognizable pink triangle against a black backdrop in 1989. The original has been used time and time again during LGBTQ+ demonstrations.

The 1988 image of late artist David Wojnarowicz donning a denim jacket that reads "If I die of AIDS - forget burial - just drop my body on the steps of the F.D.A" packs the same punch. It's an image that's stood the test of time, long after Wojnarowicz himself died of AIDS in 1992. The blunt impact of the statement during a time of fear resonates with the strength that existed alongside that fear.

In quoting Shutterstock writer and LGBTQ storyteller Grete Miller, "Images, film, video, and audio capture who we are. They are living and breathing moments. They communicate a society's struggles, battles, losses, and victories. What's more, they share our stories and continue to reveal themselves to future generations. Each visual or sound byte isn't just a memory to appreciate. It is also a human being to treasure and a lesson to learn." This article features a small snippet of the monumental work of the LGBTQ rights movement, and there's more work to follow. It's up to us to document, share, and support this powerful movement and the achievements of the past, present, and future if we want to continue to strive for equal rights and opportunities.

Top Editorial Image by Photofusion/ Shutterstock.

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LGBTQ+ Rights Movement: Take a Walk Through History

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This article has been approved by Prism, a Shutterstock ERG (Employee Resource Group) committed to creating a supportive, diverse, and inclusive company culture for LGBTQ+ people globally. June is Pride Month in many countries around the world, a time to reflect on the feelings of joy and liberation that run concurrently with the feelings of unstoppable determination within the LGBTQ community.

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There are schools now that aren't allowed to talk about LGBT issues. 

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There are schools now that aren't allowed to talk about LGBT issues. 

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It's like walking through a hailstorm...

-Polly R. (pseudonym), parent of gender non-conforming son, describing the hostile environment that LGBT children face in schools, Utah, December 2015

Outside the home, schools are the primary vehicles for educating, socializing, and providing services to young people in the United States. Schools can be difficult environments for students, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, but they are often especially unwelcoming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. A lack of policies and practices that affirm and support LGBT youth-and a failure to implement protections that do exist-means that LGBT students nationwide continue to face bullying, exclusion, and discrimination in school, putting them at physical and psychological risk and limiting their education.

In 2001, Human Rights Watch published Hatred in the Hallways: Violence and Discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students in US Schools. The report documented rampant bullying and discrimination against LGBT students in schools across the country, and urged policymakers and school officials to take concrete steps to respect and protect the rights of LGBT youth.

Over the last 15 years, lawmakers and school administrators have increasingly recognized that LGBT youth are a vulnerable population in school settings, and many have implemented policies designed to ensure all students feel safe and welcome at school.

Yet progress is uneven. In many states and school districts, LGBT students and teachers lack protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In others, protections that do exist are inadequate or unenforced. As transgender and gender non-conforming students have become more visible, too, many states and school districts have ignored their needs and failed to ensure they enjoy the same academic and extracurricular benefits as their non-transgender peers.

This undermines a number of fundamental human rights, including LGBT students' rights to education, personal security, freedom from discrimination, access to information, free expression, association and privacy.

Areas of concern include bullying and harassment, exclusion from school curricula and resources, restrictions on LGBT student groups, and other forms of discrimination and bigotry against students and staff based on sexual orientation and gender identity. While not exhaustive, these broad issues offer a starting point for policymakers and administrators to ensure that LGBT people's rights are respected and protected in schools.

LGBT Experiences in School

Social pressures are part of the school experience of many students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. But the experience can be particularly difficult for LGBT students, who often struggle to make sense of their identities, lack support from family and friends, and encounter negative messaging about LGBT people at school and in their community.

In some instances, teachers themselves mocked LGBT youth or joined the bullying. Lynette G., the mother of a young girl with a gay father in South Dakota, recalled that when her daughter was eight, "she ran home because they were teasing her. Like, 'Oh, your dad is a cocksucker, a faggot, he sucks dick.' ... She saw a teacher laughing and that traumatized her even worse."

Students also reported difficulty accessing information about LGBT issues from teachers and counselors, and found little information in school libraries and on school computers. In some districts, this silence was exacerbated by state law. In Alabama, Texas, Utah, and five other US states, antiquated states laws restrict discussions of homosexuality in schools. Such restrictions make it difficult or impossible for LGBT youth to get information about health and well-being on the same terms as heterosexual peers. "In my health class I tested the water by asking [the teacher] about safer sex, because I'm gay," Brayden W., a 17-year-old boy in Utah, said. "He said he was not allowed to talk about it."

The effects of these laws are not only limited to health or sexuality education classes. As students and teachers describe in this report, they also chilled discussions of LGBT topics and themes in history, government, psychology, and English classes.

Many LGBT youth have organized gay-straight alliances (GSAs), which can serve as important resources for students and as supportive spaces to counteract bullying and institutional silence about issues of importance to them. As this report documents, however, these clubs continue to encounter obstacles from some school administrators that make it difficult for them to form and operate.

When GSAs were allowed to form, some students said they were subject to more stringent requirements than other clubs, were left out of school-wide activities, or had their advertising defaced or destroyed. Serena I., a 17-year-old bisexual girl in Utah, said: "It's mental abuse, almost, seeing all these posters up and yours is the only one that's written on or torn down."

Often, LGBT students also lacked teacher role models. In the absence of employment protections, many LGBT teachers said they feared backlash from parents or adverse employment consequences if they were open about their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Discrimination and bigotry against transgender students took various forms, including restricting bathroom and locker room access, limiting participation in extracurricular activities, and curtailing other forms of expression-for example, dressing for the school day or special events like homecoming. "They didn't let me in and I didn't get my money back," said Willow K., a 14-year-old transgender girl in Texas who attempted to wear a dress to her homecoming.

LGBT students also described persistent patterns of isolation, exclusion, and marginalization that made them feel unsafe or unwelcome at school. Students described how hearing slurs, lacking resources relevant to their experience, being discouraged from having same-sex relationships, and being regularly misgendered made the school a hostile environment, which in turn can impact health and well-being.

Acanthus R., a 17-year-old pansexual, non-binary transgender student in Utah, said it was "like a little mental pinch" when teachers used the wrong pronouns. "It doesn't seem like a big deal, but eventually you bruise."

Comprehensive approaches are urgently needed to make school environments welcoming for LGBT students and staff, and to allow students to learn and socialize with peers without fearing exclusion, humiliation, or violence. Above all:

States should repeal outdated and stigmatizing laws that deter and arguably prohibit discussion of LGBT issues in schools, and enact laws protecting students and staff from bullying and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Schools should ensure that policies, curricula, and resources explicitly include LGBT people, and that the school environment is responsive to the specific needs of LGBT youth.

Teachers and administrators should work to make existing policies meaningful by enforcing protections and intervening when bullying or discrimination occurs.

To State Legislatures

Ensure that state laws against bullying and harassment include enumerated protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Ensure that state non-discrimination laws include explicit protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, particularly in education, employment, and public accommodations;

Repeal laws that preclude local school districts from providing enumerated protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Repeal laws that prohibit or restrict discussion of LGBT issues in schools.

To State Departments of Education

Ensure that teachers, counselors, and other staff receive training to familiarize them with the issues LGBT students might face;

Promulgate model guidelines for school districts to follow to make schools safe and inclusive for LGBT youth.

To School Administrators

Ensure that school policies against bullying and harassment include enumerated protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Ensure that the school provide comprehensive sexuality education that is inclusive of LGBT youth, covers same-sex activity on equal footing with other sexual activity, and is medically and scientifically accurate;

Ensure that GSAs and other LGBT student organizations are permitted to form and operate on the same terms as all other student organizations;

Ensure that same-sex couples are able to date, display affection, and attend dances and other school functions on the same terms as all other student couples;

Ensure that students are able to access facilities, express themselves, and participate in classes, sports teams, and extracurricular activities in accordance with their gender identity.

To the US Congress

Enact the Equality Act or similar legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, education, federal funding, and public accommodations;

Enact the Student Non-Discrimination Act or similar legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools;

Enact the Safe Schools Improvement Act or similar legislation to encourage states to enact strong policies to prevent bullying and harassment that are inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Enact the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act or similar legislation to support comprehensive sexuality education and restrict funding to health education programs that are medically inaccurate, scientifically ineffective, or unresponsive to the needs of LGBT youth.

Human Rights Watch conducted research for this report between November 2015 and May 2016 in five US states: Alabama, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah. The sites were chosen as a regionally diverse sample of states that, at time of writing, lacked enumerated statewide protections against bullying and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.

Human Rights Watch contacted potential interviewees through nongovernmental organizations, LGBT organizations in high schools and middle schools, and LGBT organizations in post-secondary institutions where recent graduates reflected on their high school experiences. The research focused on public schools, including public charter schools, rather than private schools that enjoy greater autonomy to act in accordance with their particular beliefs under US law. Researchers spoke with 358 current or former students and 145 teachers, administrators, parents, service providers, and advocates for LGBT youth.

All interviews were conducted in English. No compensation was paid to interviewees. Whenever possible, interviews were conducted one-on-one in a private setting. Researchers also spoke with interviewees in pairs, trios, or small groups when students asked to meet together or when time and space constraints required meeting with members of student organizations simultaneously.

Researchers obtained oral informed consent from interviewees, and notified interviewees why Human Rights Watch was conducting the research and how it would use their accounts, that they did not need to answer any questions they preferred not to answer, and that they could stop the interview at any time. When students were interviewed in groups, those who were present but did not actively participate and volunteer information were not recorded or counted in our final pool of interviewees.

In this report, pseudonyms are used for interviewees who are students, teachers, or administrators in schools to protect their privacy and mitigate the risk of adverse consequences for participating in the research. Unless requested by interviewees, pseudonyms are not used for individuals who work in a public capacity on the issues discussed in this report.

Agender: Does not identify with any gender.

Aromantic: Experiences little or no romantic attraction to other people.

Asexual: Experiences little or no sexual attraction to other people.

Biromantic: Romantically attracted to two or more sexes or genders.

Bisexual: Sexually or romantically attracted to two or more sexes or genders.

Cisgender: Sex assigned at birth conforms to identified or lived gender.

Demiboy: Only partly male, regardless of sex assigned at birth.

Demigirl: Only partly female, regardless of sex assigned at birth.

Demisexual: Feels attraction only to those with whom they have a strong emotional bond.

Gay: Male is primarily sexually or romantically attracted to other males.

Genderfluid: Gender fluctuates and may differ over time.

Gender Identity:Deeply felt sense of being female or male, neither, both, or something other than female and male. Does not necessarily correspond to sex assigned at birth.

Gender Non-Conforming: Does not conform to stereotypical appearances, behaviors, or traits associated with sex assigned at birth.

Genderqueer: Identifies as neither male nor female, both male and female, or a combination of male and female, and not within the gender binary.

Lesbian: Female is primarily sexually or romantically attracted to other females.

LGBT: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.

Non-Binary: Identifies as neither male nor female.

Pansexual: Sexual or romantic attraction is not restricted by sex assigned at birth, gender, or gender identity.

Sexual Orientation: Sense of attraction to, or sexual desire for, individuals of the same sex, another sex, both, or neither.

Transgender: Sex assigned at birth does not conform to identified or lived gender.

Successes, with Limits

LGBT communities in the United States have won a number of victories over the past decade. Among other milestones, advocates have successfully fought to include sexual orientation and gender identity in federal hate crimes legislation, repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that banned LGBT persons from serving in the US military, and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment by the federal government and its contractors and subcontractors. The US Supreme Court has also extended the constitutional right to marry to same-sex couples nationwide.

When LGBT youth experience family or community rejection, schools can ideally function as safe and affirming environments for them to learn, interact with peers, and feel a sense of belonging. Yet efforts to ensure such conditions for LGBT youth in schools have historically encountered strong political, legal, and cultural resistance, and continue to face such resistance today, often due to the charge that adults are "indoctrinating" or "recruiting" youth into being LGBT.

"No Promo Homo" Laws

In some instances, pervasive anxieties about indoctrination and recruitment in schools have prompted state and local efforts-some of them successful-to limit what teachers may say about LGBT topics in the classroom.

Alabama state law dictates that "[c]ourse materials and instruction that relate to sexual education or sexually transmitted diseases should include all of the following elements ... [a]n emphasis, in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state."

Texas state law specifies that the Department of State Health Services "shall give priority to developing model education programs for persons younger than 18 years of age," and "[t]he materials in the education programs intended for persons younger than 18 years of age must ... state that homosexual conduct is not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense under Section 21.06, Penal Code."

Utah state law prohibits public schools from using materials for "community and personal health, physiology, personal hygiene, and prevention of communicable disease" that include instruction in "the intricacies of intercourse, sexual stimulation, or erotic behavior; the advocacy of homosexuality; the advocacy or encouragement of the use of contraceptive methods or devices; or the advocacy of sexual activity outside marriage."[20]

They appear alongside more general restrictions on sexuality education, including provisions requiring or encouraging abstinence education. Although each of these restrictions specifically appears in portions of state law addressing instruction in sexuality education, their chilling effects often extend much further.

As Nora F., an administrator in Utah, said:

As interviews with administrators, teachers, and students demonstrate, the practical effect of these outdated laws has been to discourage discussion of LGBT issues throughout the school environment, from curricular instruction to counseling to library resources to GSA programming. Many teachers avoided or silenced any discussion of LGBT issues in schools. At times, this was because they were unsure what it meant to "advocate" or "promote" homosexuality and feared they would face repercussions from parents or administrators if they were too frank or supportive of students. At other times, teachers refused to teach the antiquated, discriminatory messages that some no promo homo laws require them to convey when homosexuality is discussed, and so declined to address LGBT topics at all. Without clear instruction on what the laws permit, many teachers reported that they or their colleagues erred on the side of caution, excluding information that parents or administrators might construe as falling within their scope.

Impact on LGBT Students of Discrimination and Victimization

GLSEN's findings are consistent with governmental and academic studies that consistently show that LGBT youth are at elevated risk of adverse mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicidality. According to a study by the Williams Institute, a research institute at the UCLA School of Law, a disproportionate 40 percent of youth experiencing homelessness identify as LGBT, due in large part to families rejecting their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Amanda Keller, director of LGBTQ Programs and the Magic City Acceptance Center at Birmingham AIDS Outreach in Alabama, said students often told her they wished fellow students would "just hit them or lash out rather than just ignoring them, ignoring their identity, walking into them and pretending there's nobody there." Vanessa M., a counselor in Pennsylvania, said: " That stuff, it not only builds, but it takes a toll on their psyche where they don't like themselves."

At time of writing, 19 states and the District of Columbia had enacted laws prohibiting bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity statewide. Research indicates that laws and policies that enumerate sexual orientation and gender identity as protected grounds are more effective than those that merely provide a general admonition against bullying. Without express protections for sexual orientation and gender identity that are clearly conveyed to students and staff, bullying and harassment against LGBT students frequently goes unchecked.

Schools that have enacted protections do not always clearly convey them to students, faculty, and staff. In interviews, many students and teachers expressed uncertainty or offered contradictory information as to whether their school prohibited bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, even in schools where enumerated protections were already in place.

Many students reported that school personnel did not raise the issue of bullying on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity at assemblies and educational programming on bullying held at their school.

Interviewees identified multiple types of bullying and harassment that they encountered in schools, each of which has consequences for LGBT students' safety, sense of belonging, and ability to learn.

Physical Bullying

Yet some students did face persistent physical violence at school and many said their schools took no effective steps to stop it. Sandra C., the mother of a 16-year-old gay boy in Utah, described a pattern of harassment that culminated in her withdrawing her son from the school:

Some students who experienced physical violence hesitated to tell adults for fear that reporting would be ineffectual or make the situation worse. Willow K., a 14-year-old transgender girl in Texas, recalled being abused by members of the football team in seventh grade:

In one incident in Montgomery, Alabama in 2014, a gay high school student was surrounded and assaulted by a group of male students who punched and kicked him repeatedly, breaking his arm and leg. As Paul Hard, a counselor in Alabama, recalled:

Kevin I., a 17-year-old transgender boy in Utah, said:

When administrators react indifferently to bullying and harassment, it can deter students from coming forward. Alexander S., a 16-year-old transgender boy in Texas, said:

Alexander's parents finally learned of the bullying after he attempted suicide. He has continued to struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts, and has been repeatedly admitted to inpatient care for treatment.

Verbal Harassment and Hostile Environments

Almost all of the students interviewed for the report reported encountering verbal harassment in their school environment, even in the most LGBT-friendly schools. In some schools, derogatory phrases like "that's so gay" and slurs like "dyke" or "faggot" were used by students to belittle or taunt peers, whether or not the targets identified as LGBT. Students stressed that even these generalized slurs contributed to a sense of hostility and danger in the school environment.

In each of the five states where interviews were conducted, researchers encountered schools where slurs were ubiquitous. Katrina I., a 17-year-old gay girl in Alabama, noted: "All the time, I hear slurs. I hear 'queer' thrown around a lot, the F word [faggot] thrown around a lot." Joel W., a genderfluid 17-year-old in Pennsylvania, said: "I hear slurs almost every single class." Ryan K., an 18-year-old student in South Dakota, concurred: "I hear it like every class period." In addition to "that's so gay," "faggot," and "dyke," transgender students reported encountering anti-transgender slurs like "tranny" or being referred to with dismissive, dehumanizing terms like "it" or "fe-man."

Students also encountered anti-LGBT graffiti and slurs written on the school building, tests and papers, and personal property, and noted that their schools failed to investigate or rectify the vandalism. Kayla E., a 17-year-old lesbian student in Pennsylvania, said:

Students noted that some of the verbal harassment they encountered occurred in spaces that were unmonitored by teachers, administrators, and other staff, such as hallways, cafeterias, buses, and locker rooms. Yet even in classrooms and in communal spaces where school personnel were present, many students said teachers did little to intervene to stop slurs and verbal harassment.

Colin N., an 18-year-old transgender boy in Pennsylvania who heard slurs daily, said:

Charlie O., a genderfluid 17-year-old in Texas, described a similar incident:

In sophomore history class, we had to stand up and say our name and one thing we're part of, and I said 'Charlie, and GSA,' and a girl said 'what's GSA?,' and a boy in the corner said, 'That's the faggot club.' The teacher just kind of looked at him. The teachers turn a blind eye.

In some instances, teachers and administrators' willingness to effectively respond to slurs was compromised by laws or policies restricting the discussion of LGBT issues in schools. Alice L., a 53-year-old mother of a transgender student in Utah, said: "I've talked to teachers who are like, 'I'd like to stop it, but I don't know what to say, and particularly in light of Utah's laws where I can't promote homosexuality.'"

Lynette G., the mother of a young girl with a gay father in South Dakota, said the role of teachers in teasing was problematic as early as elementary school:

In addition to tacit encouragement, some teachers themselves made dismissive or derogatory comments about LGBT people, sometimes passing off such remarks as jokes and on other occasions appearing to intend disparagement. Bianca L., a 16-year-old bisexual girl in Alabama, said:

Michelle A., a genderfluid 18-year-old student in South Dakota, said: "I built something in a day ... and I said it wasn't really good, and he [the teacher] said, 'Well, that's lesbian construction.'"

Tristan O., a 21-year-old transgender man in Pennsylvania, recalled that when he was in school, many of his teachers made gay jokes with students, and "when teachers or authority figures make comments, you're stuck with those people in school. And that chips away at you." Kelly A., a 19-year-old gay cisgender woman in Utah, remembered: "Teachers said 'that's so gay' - my gym teacher, a math teacher, and a science teacher." Students also identified coaches and JROTC [Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps] personnel who called students "gay," "fags," or feminizing or sexist terms. Eliza H., an 18-year-old bisexual girl in Alabama, recalled: "[M]y girlfriend walked me to class and she came in and held my hand, and [the teacher] told me we're going to hell because we're together." Cheyenne F., a 17-year-old transgender student in Alabama, recalled being told in class by a health teacher "that America's acceptance of gays and abortion was the cause of the fall of the Twin Towers," a reference to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Condemnation of students on religious grounds was particularly evident in interviews in Utah. Approximately 60 percent of Utah's population belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church. Across the state, public schools give students release time in which the school disclaims responsibility for the student and allows them to leave the campus. During this period, students may attend seminary classes in church buildings adjacent to public schools for religious instruction. Students described strong pressure to attend seminary.

Cyber Bullying

LGBT students described a double-edged relationship with technology and social media, which allowed them to find communities online to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity, but also exposed them to bullying and harassment.

Students acknowledged that cyberbullying is a problem for middle and high schoolers generally, but said LGBT students could be particularly vulnerable to harassment. Miley D., a 17-year-old bisexual girl in Alabama, suggested: "O nline, if you're open about anything about yourself, you're prone to be bullied. And if you're LGBT, it's 10 times worse."

Alexander S., a 16-year-old transgender boy in Texas, said:

Sexual Harassment

Unlike gay and bisexual boys, who were rarely treated as sex objects by their peers, lesbian and bisexual girls said they were regularly propositioned for sex by straight male classmates.

Other students described invasive questions about sexual practices and genitalia, which were most often reported by transgender and gender non-conforming youth. Kayla E., a 17-year-old lesbian girl in Pennsylvania, said:

In addition to sexual harassment, lesbian and bisexual girls and transgender and gender non-conforming students were subject to overt threats of sexual assault. Tracy M., an 18-year-old in Texas, said:

Julian L., a 15-year-old transgender boy in South Dakota, described being threatened during his freshman year by a senior:

Exclusion and Isolation

A lack of friends and feelings of loneliness were common for LGBT youth. Jonah O., a 16-year-old gay boy in Alabama, said:

A common example was belittling comments or exclusion from group activities. As Ginger M., a 17-year-old bisexual girl in Utah, asked: "[H]ow do you go to the administration with that? Someone laughed because I'm gay?" According to Dave W., a 44-year-old teacher and GSA advisor in Pennsylvania, such slights "make a difference after a while... People don't look you in the eye, teachers don't call on you in class, they have lower expectations of you."

LGBT students responded to isolation and exclusion in different ways. Some recounted how they carefully policed their behavior, dress, and friendships to fit in and avoid harassment. Max R., a 13-year-old student in Pennsylvania, commented:

Others responded by distancing themselves even further from their peers. Caleb C., a gay non-binary 20-year-old in Utah, recalled :

Exclusion and Isolation by LGBT Peers

Reporting and Retaliation

Schools typically encourage students to report when they are bullied or harassed by students or adults. Yet some students who did report physical bullying, verbal harassment, or sexual harassment were rebuffed.

Garrett B., a 16-year-old pansexual transgender boy in Alabama, described inaction when he reported threats of physical violence:

Students reported being told their schools could not address bullying or harassment without proof, and used the fact that they lacked the evidence necessary to discipline a student to justify inaction. Furthermore, students who tried to document various forms of bullying and harassment with their phones or cameras found themselves being punished for using devices in school.

Noah P., a 14-year-old transgender boy in Texas, said:

Students who engaged or fought back faced additional barriers or punishment, even when the instigator went unpunished. Ginger M., a 17-year-old bisexual girl in Utah, said:

Jordan L., a gay 17-year-old student in Texas, said:

Schools directly teach and instruct students with curricular offerings. But they also provide physical and mental health resources, library materials, access to the internet, extracurricular and noncurricular activities, and opportunities to socialize. In each of these areas, students noted that LGBT perspectives were either neglected or expressly excluded on the grounds that they were not appropriate or relevant for youth.

As LGBT people become more visible, research suggests that students are coming out or exploring their sexual orientation and gender identity at younger ages. The silence surrounding LGBT issues in schools not only sends a message to students that their identities are somehow inappropriate, but leaves them ill-prepared to deal with issues that schools equip their heterosexual and cisgender peers to handle.

Classroom Instruction and Discussion

Adults echoed students' perceptions that teachers and administrators treated LGBT issues more cautiously than others. Amy L., a teacher in Pennsylvania, said: "We read Will Grayson, Will Grayson last year, and a lot of the male students didn't want to read it because it had two students that are gay, and the school let them opt out and read a different book. We don't do that for other things."

Teachers in some schools silenced students who attempted to raise LGBT issues as a topic of discussion. Rowan C., a 15-year-old pansexual genderfluid student in Alabama, noted:

In some instances, teachers rebuked students for speaking up about LGBT issues. Angela T., a 17-year-old girl in Pennsylvania, said:

In some instances, teachers rebuked students who brought up LGBT issues or themes. Catherine G., a 17-year-old asexual girl in Alabama, recalled one such incident in a story-writing exercise in seventh grade:

Even some supportive teachers, fearing backlash, expressed reluctance to engage with LGBT topics in class. Sharon B., a teacher and GSA advisor in Alabama, said:

Horacio J., a teacher and GSA advisor in Alabama concurred:

Comprehensive Sexuality Education

In each of the states where interviews were conducted, students said the sexuality education they received was nonexistent or inadequate-only teaching abstinence, for example-often because it was not taught or was not a required component of the curriculum. However, when it was taught in their school, they said it was especially limited for LGBT youth.

Some teachers placed LGBT issues off-limits or made clear they would not be teaching about same-sex activity. Miley D., a 17-year-old bisexual girl in Alabama, described how the coach who taught her health class:

Evan H., a 19-year-old man in Utah, said:

Placing the onus on students to ask questions or raise LGBT issues made it difficult for them to elicit the information that they needed to lead safe, healthy, and affirming sexual lives. For many students, it was not clear what information they would need in the future or what questions they should ask. Caleb C., a gay non-binary 20-year-old in Utah, said: "Utah teaches abstinence plus, so it's abstinence only but students can ask questions. Which sucks, because kids don't know what to ask."

When students themselves tried to raise questions that were pertinent to LGBT youth, instructors more typically reacted with embarrassment or deflection. Kevin I., a 17-year-old transgender boy in Utah, said:

As a result, many teachers err on the side of avoiding any discussion of LGBT issues at all, in sexuality education and in the curriculum generally. Even in Pennsylvania and South Dakota, which did not have a statewide no promo homo law, individual schools imposed their own limits on discussions of same-sex activity. These took various forms, from regulating curricula to restricting what teachers say in the classroom to punishing teachers who addressed LGBT issues in a frank manner.

Pauline J., a community health educator in Pennsylvania, described

In addition to LGBT issues, some students said that asexuality was not addressed in health curricula. Andrea L., a 17-year-old asexual girl in Pennsylvania, said:

The need for LGBT students to receive comprehensive sexuality education is clear. LGBT youth encounter a number of health issues that existing health classes fail to address. As Pauline J., a community health educator in Pennsylvania, said:

Although discussions of same-sex activity were restricted at the state level and by individual schools and instructors, transgender issues were also virtually absent from classroom discussions, despite the unique health concerns that transgender youth face. Joel W., a 17-year-old asexual, genderfluid student in Pennsylvania, said:

The absence of LGBT-inclusive information is particularly detrimental insofar as LGBT youth may not know where else they can obtain trustworthy information about sexuality. Many students either were not out to their parents or said their parents did not accept their sexual orientation or gender identity, limiting their ability to obtain information about sexuality when it was not provided at school.

Cameron S., a 16-year-old boy in South Dakota, said:

Refusal to convey accurate, nonjudgmental information about same-sex activity and other LGBT issues puts LGBT youth at heightened risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Maureen Gray, coordinator of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Rainbow Alliance, recalled a conversation with a HIV-positive young man in his early twenties:

The absence of LGBT-inclusive comprehensive sexuality education not only left students ill-equipped to navigate sexual activity, but often exacerbated feelings of difference, exclusion, or stigmatization. Students underscored that the sexuality education they received took for granted that they were cisgender and heterosexual. Discussions of puberty and bodily development presumed that students were cisgender; indeed, some students were divided by sex, so students who were assigned female at birth attended a discussion of women's development and bodies and students who were assigned male at birth attended a discussion of men's development and bodies.

Similarly, students noted that discussions of sexual activity, relationships, and marriage almost always operated under the assumption of heterosexuality. When same-sex relationships were acknowledged, students said it was typically as a cursory aside rather than a consistent, integrated recognition of their equal validity.

Counseling and Support

Many schools provide counselors to ensure that the academic and mental health needs of students are reliably met. Counseling is particularly important for LGBT youth, who face stressors at home and in schools that put them at a high risk for adverse mental health and academic outcomes.

These findings suggest that LGBT youth are in particular need of counselors who are attuned to their unique needs and risk factors. Unfortunately, students often lack access to supportive, culturally competent counseling in schools. None of the states surveyed required counselors to be trained on sexual orientation or gender identity, leaving it up to individual counselors to seek out cultural competency training on LGBT issues.

The result was that very few students interviewed by Human Rights Watch regarded the school counselor's office as a resource or supportive space. Natalie D., a 17-year-old agender student in Utah, called the school counselor "completely useless." Ginger M., a 17-year-old bisexual girl in Utah, observed: "The counselors don't have any resources," and "asked us to bring stuff back." As Cam I., a 17-year-old bisexual student who dropped out of high school in Texas, said:

They weren't really good about grappling with mental health issues. And that's something that's really prevalent for people in the LGBT community.... That definitely factored into the decision to leave the school system.

In the absence of clear indications that counselors were accepting and inclusive of LGBT youth, many students expressed reluctance to utilize them as a resource. Some counselors overtly signaled they were unwilling or unable to be nonjudgmental resources for LGBT youth. Paul Hard, a counselor and professor in Alabama, recalled a case

In the absence of training, and with laws pertaining to gender and sexuality in schools-including anti-bullying laws and no promo homo laws-counselors may incorrectly believe they cannot counsel LGBT youth without parental permission. Rebecca C., an 18-year-old lesbian girl in Alabama, recalled seeking help from a counselor in eighth grade when she had nowhere else to turn:

Counselors may also incorrectly believe they are obligated to report a student's sexual orientation or gender identity to their parents when that fact is divulged to them. Nora F., an administrator in Utah, pointed out that this is encouraged by ambiguities in the state's anti-bullying law, which requires parental notification when children are bullied in school:

Maintaining confidentiality is critically important when serving LGBT youth, due in large part to the withdrawal of support or repercussions they may experience when their sexual orientation or gender identity is disclosed to parents, teachers, or other adults. Nonetheless, counselors, teachers, and other school personnel may fail to grasp the importance of confidentiality.

As students attested in interviews, any interaction with school personnel about one's sexual orientation or gender identity-reporting bullying, meeting with a counselor, attending the GSA, wearing gender-affirming clothes in school, or requesting access to an all-gender restroom-could be fraught with risk that students would be outed to other staff, their classmates, or their family members.

Administrators outed Alexis J., a genderfluid 19-year-old in Texas, to their family:

Incidents of outing and concerns about counselor confidentiality discouraged other students from coming forward, limiting their access to resources. Natalie D., a 17-year-old agender student in Utah, said:

Her friends stopped talking to her, and her mother kicked her out of the house. She's been crammed back in the closet. And she was tortured in high school.

Library and Internet Resources

Schools provide libraries, technological tools, and access to the internet, and in so doing, act as providers and gatekeepers for students seeking information about various topics.

However, information about sexual orientation and gender identity is often scarce. Censorship of LGBT content in schools not only sends a discriminatory and stigmatizing message that LGBT content is inherently inappropriate, but deprives students of the right to access information that could be important to their development, health, and safety.

Most students reported that they were not aware of any books or information on LGBT topics in their school libraries. Hannah L., a teacher in Utah, said:

The absence of available material meant that students looked elsewhere, typically, in commercial bookstores or on the internet, where information may be available but not necessarily curated for elementary, middle, and high school students.

Filters that schools apply to web access may limit students' ability to get information about LGBT topics using school-provided tools, and deprive students of information regarding their health, rights, and resources in their community.

William J., a 17-year-old gay boy in Texas, said: "On the school computers, when I'm trying to find stuff about LGBT youth, it'll say 'blocked site.'" Sharon B., a teacher and GSA advisor in Alabama, noted: " I had two students write a paper on a TED talk on homosexuality, and they also had to write the paper at home because they weren't able to do it at school." Veronica I., an 18-year-old student in South Dakota, said censorship can affect studies:

Forming Gay-Straight Alliances

Schools typically set out requirements that students must follow in order to form non-curricular student groups, including that students write a group charter or constitution, identify a faculty sponsor, and complete any necessary paperwork to begin meeting.

While all groups, regardless of focus, must theoretically adhere to the same requirements, interviews with students and teachers indicate that it can be harder to establish a GSA than other student groups, both because of stronger scrutiny by administrators, school boards, and parents and because GSAs may lack faculty support.

Students' perceptions were confirmed by teachers themselves, who said they were concerned that being openly supportive of LGBT youth could cost them their jobs. Renee F., a teacher and GSA advisor in Utah, said "The first time I was approached to be the GSA advisor, I was like, I'm not tenured, I'd better not." Sharon B., a teacher and GSA advisor in Alabama, recalled: " I didn't know this at the time, but when I started the GSA, parents went to the school board and tried to get me fired."

Fears of backlash against GSAs were particularly discouraging for staff who were themselves LGBT. A number of GSA leaders noted that they were able to be resources for LGBT youth precisely because they were straight, and would not face the scrutiny or backlash that an LGBT counterpart would likely face. Vanessa M., a counselor in Pennsylvania, recalled discussions she had about starting a middle school GSA:

Concerns about backlash or retaliation could prevent those with firsthand knowledge of LGBT issues, who might function as role models for LGBT youth, to remain closeted or keep their distance from the GSA. One advocate for LGBT youth in Alabama said:

Whether because of school policy or because of a fear of retaliation, GSAs in the schools examined were almost always the product of student advocacy, and not begun by teachers who recognized the need for a safe and nonjudgmental space for LGBT students and allies in school. George Taylor, an LGBT youth advocate with Shared Goals LLC in Alabama, said:

Nora F., an administrator in Utah, said:

You have to find a sponsor, so when you're in the heart of conservative Texas, you have to go through a school of classic white Christian teachers and you're really scared because they have a cross by their desk and you're like, are they those kinds of Christians?

Even with faculty backing, students attempting to form GSAs encountered other obstacles. Despite court rulings deeming the practice impermissible under the Equal Access Act, some students noted that they were told they had to broaden their GSA's mission in order to obtain approval. Levi B., a 16-year-old gay boy in Utah, said:

Other students were told they could form a GSA, but were not allowed to use terms like "LGBT" or "queer" in the name, mission, or advertising. Such a stance creates particular problems for groups with members or leaders whose primary identification is not gay or lesbian-for example, students who are bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Lucas K., an 18-year-old transgender boy in South Dakota, recalled:

The use of "queer" was a particular sticking point for administrators, who treated it as a slur rather than recognizing that it could also be a term reclaimed by LGBT communities. Piper N., a 15-year-old pansexual student at another high school in South Dakota, said:

When students expressed interest in forming a GSA, or even persisted and satisfied the necessary requirements, some school administrators stonewalled students, delaying discussions or approval until interested students gave up or graduated from the school. Jayden N., a 16-year-old gay boy in Texas, described how his principal appeared to stall approving a GSA before a local LGBT activist and a supportive adult in the school system helped push the issue on his behalf:

Mia E., a 16-year-old pansexual girl in Pennsylvania, was similarly stonewalled and ultimately unsuccessful when she tried to start a GSA:

Operating Gay-Straight Alliances

Even after students successfully formed GSAs, administrators at times imposed obstacles to their free and successful operation. When they are strictly or selectively enforced, even seemingly neutral requirements can preclude students from operating GSAs. In overt and subtle ways, GSAs were discouraged from building their membership, advertising their existence to the school community, or undertaking programming.

GSA advisors and members identified parental permission requirements as a formidable barrier to organizing and operating GSAs. Whether they are generally applicable to student clubs or specifically enforced against GSAs, these requirements exclude students who cannot obtain permission from their parents or guardians or worry about the potentially serious consequences-for example, being rejected, forced into therapy, withdrawn from school, kicked out, disowned, or subjected to violence-if their parents or guardians suspect they might be LGBT. As a result, the students who are in most need of the supportive environment provided by a GSA are often effectively barred from attending or participating.

In some instances, parental permission requirements were selectively applied against the GSA but not against other clubs. Joe J., a teacher and GSA advisor in Utah, said:

Some students did not feel they could tell their parents about their involvement with the GSA for fear they would be barred from attending or would face repercussions. Lucia B., a high school student in Pennsylvania, said:

Her classmate Ashley D., an 18-year-old girl, said:

In some instances, students said that administrators turned away announcements from the GSA or persistently neglected to make those announcements as they would for other groups. Serena I., a 17-year-old bisexual girl in Utah, observed: "We've put in announcements and they skip them." GSA advisors ran into this problem as well. Arthur C., a teacher and GSA advisor in Texas, said: "I'd put announcements in weekly and they'd often go unread. The students who'd read them would laugh or start to read them and stop." Isabel M., a GSA advisor in South Dakota, noted that after a particularly contentious backlash from parents against the Day of Silence, her school's GSA was prohibited from making announcements outright.

Some students said that even after GSAs were allowed to form, school personnel restricted the words and messaging they were able to use in announcements and posters. Jayden N., a 16-year-old gay boy in Texas, said:

Misty A., a teacher in Texas, similarly recalled:

One of the most pervasive problems that GSAs faced was posters being ripped, defaced, or destroyed without consequence. Ethan B., a 16-year-old transgender boy in Texas, said:

Other GSA advisors and members explained that, because their posters were so regularly defaced, they had simply stopped making them and advertising the club in the common areas of the school.

Kevin I., a 17-year-old transgender boy in Utah, said of his GSA:

Some school administrators also strictly and selectively enforced prohibitions on involvement with speakers or groups beyond the school. Jayden N., a 16-year-old gay boy in Texas, said: "We also weren't allowed to announce events from outside groups that were part of us. But other groups would announce community events." Lucas K., an 18-year-old transgender boy in South Dakota, encountered the same resistance with his GSA:

Some GSAs were prohibited from raising awareness, speaking out against discrimination, or undertaking other programming. Patrick J., a teacher and GSA advisor in South Dakota, said the GSA had been told it could not hold a fundraising bake sale, although he noted " student council is selling root beer floats tomorrow. And the sports teams sell food like that."

Many LGBT students, teachers, and staff face overt discrimination and acts of bigotry because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

As the testimonies of LGBT students, teachers, and administrators show, discrimination and bigotry against LGBT people in school environments can be subtle or overt. Transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary youth in particular have faced discrimination and bigotry in schools, due in part to the pervasively gendered nature of many school environments, a lack of clarity about the legal obligations that schools must meet when issues arise, and a lack of training and familiarity on the part of school personnel.

Bullying and discrimination, together with a range of other practices that students identified, can lead to LGBT students being seen as anomalous or excluded from the school community. Repeated slights and microaggressions created a hostile environment for many LGBT youth in schools.

Bigotry and Fear of Repercussion Faced by LGBT Staff and Faculty

Discussions of LGBT issues in schools often focus on LGBT youth, who are especially vulnerable to bullying, harassment, and adverse academic and mental health outcomes. Yet LGBT school personnel also encounter adverse treatment because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. LGBT teachers who were out at school frequently faced harassment from students. Victoria P., a 16-year-old lesbian girl in Pennsylvania, said:

Sometimes, adverse treatment came from other faculty and staff as well. Arthur C., a transgender teacher in Texas, said:

Kevin D., a gay teacher in Texas, cited an instance when his partner kissed him on the cheek at the school door, and a student told their parent, who reported it to the principal.

Such a hostile climate can lead teachers who have not 'come out' to fear doing so. Isabel M., a GSA advisor in South Dakota, said:

Many interviewees-LGBT-identified and not-also voiced concerns about potential employment consequences of openly supporting LGBT students. In addition to the reluctance to sponsor GSAs, teachers said they wanted to avoid any perception they were expressly supportive on LGBT issues because they feared backlash from parents or school administrators. Glenda Elliott, a member of the Safe Schools Coalition in Alabama, said:

[F]aculty have no protection if they are gay, and those that might be willing to be supportive-and I've had them tell me this-they're afraid to be a strong advocate or ally, because they'll be shunned by colleagues, and they're not sure their principal will support them. You're talking about older people, in their 40s, 50s, 60s, when you're talking about principals and superintendents-and they're not changing overnight.

Nora F., an administrator in Utah, explained how this spilled into classroom instruction:

Even though outright firing was said to be rare, teachers still feared adverse consequences and hostility from colleagues and supervisors. Marisol J., an administrator in Texas, said:

Reticence about being too visible as LGBT or supportive of LGBT youth can limit the ability of supportive teachers to help students in need. Ellen A., a transgender teacher in Utah, recalled a difficult incident prior to her transition at school:

A lack of employment non-discrimination protections fueled the fear and uncertainty that teachers faced. Genie Taylor, an LGBT youth advocate with Shared Goals LLC in Alabama, explained: "If those policies were in place, according to what we've heard from teachers, they'd feel more comfortable standing up for kids if they weren't concerned about being outed." Ellen A. underscored the importance of such protections in her own decision to come out as transgender and transition in the workplace. "Senate Bill 296 in the state of Utah made it less threatening for me to lose my job."

Same-Sex Couples in Schools

Casey Akers, a sophomore at Timber Creek High School in Fort Worth, Texas, made local headlines in 2015 when her school stopped her from making a "promposal" inviting another girl in her school to prom. As she explained in an interview, "I had a friend who was a senior, and just as friends, she asked if we'd be prom dates. Texas has a thing where we prompose to people, where you ask someone to go to prom in a special way. So before school started, I asked an administrator if I could do a promposal, just when and how, not who I was asking. The same administrator found me at lunch and asked if I was asking a girl to prom, and I said, 'yes,' and she said I couldn't because it was not appropriate. The school let out a rule or notice that they had never let anyone do promposals [in her school district]. But the next day there were promposals going on with no consequence. The rule said any promposals would have consequences, but there were no consequences."

Other students reported school personnel discouraging them from bringing a same-sex date to prom, telling them that they could not do so, or refusing them a reduced price couple's ticket. Kyra S., an 18-year-old queer woman in Alabama, recalled:

Gabby W., a 19-year-old bisexual woman in Alabama, encountered similar resistance with her same-sex date:

Caleb C., a gay non-binary 20-year-old in Utah, recalled:

Access to Facilities

One of the most pressing concerns for transgender students is safety in bathrooms and locker rooms. Proponents of bathroom and locker room restrictions cite student safety as a reason to require students to use facilities according to their sex assigned at birth. But when schools require transgender girls to use the men's room or require transgender boys to use the women's room-which teachers do not monitor-they put them at risk of physical, verbal, or sexual assault from other students or adults.

Transgender students interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that being made to use facilities that did not correspond to their gender identity made them feel unsafe at school or exposed them to verbal and physical assault. Willow K., a 14-year-old transgender girl in Texas, recalled of her required eighth grade gym class:

The previous year, Willow had been assaulted by a group of football players in the locker room, making the requirement that she use the male locker room particularly difficult. Alexis J., a self-described genderfluid 19-year-old in Texas, recalled a gym class where"I had to strip down to girly underwear in front of a bunch of dudes. And they're like, 'Faggot.' And this was freshman year, so they're just vicious."

Transgender students expressed particular concern about physical assault and harassment in boys' bathrooms and locker rooms, but described harassment in girls' bathrooms and locker rooms as well. Kevin I., a 17-year-old transgender boy in Utah, said:

And while many of the transgender students interviewed identified strongly as boys or girls and wanted to use the corresponding facilities, many others said they did not feel safe in either space and felt their only option was to forego bathrooms, gym classes, and gendered extracurricular activities with their peers altogether.

The tendency to see LGBT people and issues as inherently sexual also colored lesbian, gay, and bisexual students' interactions in locker rooms. This was an especially prominent theme in interviews with young lesbian and bisexual women. Charlie O., a 17-year-old pansexual genderfluid student in Texas, offered an example:

Caleb C., a gay non-binary 20-year-old in Utah, said:

As a result of discomfort, harassment, and exclusion, some LGBT students opted not to take gym class. In some states and school districts, however, gym class is required to graduate, putting LGBT students in difficult positions. Some students interviewed for this report took gym classes online, bypassing the physical and social benefits of taking those classes with their peers. As noted above, others remained in gym classes but avoided changing or participating, often receiving poor grades as a result.

A number of medical authorities have emphasized that social transition, including access to bathrooms consistent with one's gender identity, is among the most important aspects of transition, and is crucial to transgender students' health and well-being.

Parents of transgender youth observed the repercussions of restricted access to facilities, particularly in elementary schoolers and middle schoolers. In an interview with Human Rights Watch in Texas, Tanya H., the mother of a nine-year-old transgender boy named Elijah, recalled:

A year ago at this time, he was having a really hard time, and he'd go into the girl's bathroom and girls would yell, 'There's a boy in here!' and he couldn't go to the boys' bathroom, and so he stopped going to the bathroom. There were a lot of meltdowns.

When Elijah mentioned suicide and was briefly hospitalized, his mother spoke to administrators to ensure that he would be treated as a boy when he started at a new school in the fall. Tanya recalled:

He was kind of worried about going to a new school, and he said, 'If I can go as a boy, okay.' He's just fallen into it, and he's so much happier.... He's making friends who know him as a boy.

Ingrid A., the parent of a transgender girl in fifth grade in Pennsylvania, recalled a similar shift when her daughter transitioned at school:

She was a darker child, prior. When she would be angry, her tantrums would go to a dark place: 'I want to die,' 'God made a mistake,' 'I'm not supposed to be a boy.'... But that year of transition, she just became comfortable with herself and you just saw this kid blossom.

Proponents of restrictions on bathroom and locker room access often cite the privacy or discomfort of cisgender students using the same facilities as a justification for excluding transgender youth. However, as described above, these concerns are far outweighed by the harmful and potentially dangerous impact on transgender students of policies that deny them the use of facilities that correspond to their gender identity. Such discrimination can also undermine transgender students' right to privacy, by effectively outing them as transgender to peers and school staff.

Some schools have allowed transgender students to use alternative facilities, including faculty bathrooms normally off-limits to students, as an alternative to giving them free access to facilities that correspond with their gender identity. This is not an adequate compromise. Several transgender students told us that requesting or using all-gender options that cisgender students did not use served to convey their transgender status to faculty, staff, and peers as well. Silas G., a 15-year-old transgender boy in South Dakota, said: "My teacher would grill me, 'Why are you going to the nurse?'.... And I got yelled at for using the faculty bathroom." Teagan W., a 16-year-old transgender boy in Texas, said when using the faculty bathroom, "I get a lot of weird looks from teachers. I'll wait until teachers go in so they're not like, 'What are you doing?'"

On the other hand, some transgender students prefer the use of all-gender facilities because they do not feel comfortable in bathrooms that correspond to the gender binary. In these situations, schools should take steps to minimize the degree of unwanted scrutiny this generates, including by instructing teachers to refrain from interrogating students' use of alternative facilities.

For students who feared strong disapprobation, violence, or being kicked out of their house if their transgender status was disclosed to their parents, the threat of disclosure can discourage them from talking with school officials about bathroom access, including discussions of all-gender alternatives.

Privacy is indeed lacking in many school bathroom and locker room facilities. Some schools have removed stall doors from bathrooms in an effort to deter drug use and other prohibited behavior. And many if not most school locker rooms require students to change clothes and/or shower in a shared, communal space without curtains or other barriers.

Restrictions on bathroom usage also compromise transgender students' education and their ability to participate fully in the school community on an equal footing with others. When students are preoccupied with the unavailability of safe places to relieve themselves, forego participation in gym classes, or suffer other negative impacts resulting from discriminatory restrictions, they are less able to learn and participate fully in school.

Ursula P., a 16-year-old transgender girl in Alabama, said:

They refused to put me in girls' PE last year, and I was scared to go in the locker room and [change clothes] and wouldn't participate, and so I failed. I requested to do girls' PE and it's been over a month; I don't think they're making the decision. And I need a whole year of PE to graduate.

In some instances, students who had been offered the use of all-gender bathrooms noted that these were inconveniently located-often distant from classrooms, and far less prevalent than gendered options.

Zack T., a 16-year-old transgender boy in Texas, said:

The unavailability of safe and accessible bathrooms and locker rooms also compromises participation in the school community more generally. For example, students described strategies of leaving the campus entirely to find a bathroom at a gas station, fast food restaurant, or other establishment that they could use safely and comfortably, and, as a result, missing out on opportunities to eat lunch or socialize with peers. Students also explained that they did not participate in extracurricular activities - primarily sports, but also choir, drama, and other activities - because they expected they would have to participate as their sex assigned at birth in the activity and any associated use of locker rooms or bathrooms for out of town trips.

Some students told Human Rights Watch that all-gender facilities, introduced as an option available to all students, would be their preferred solution, and lessen the stress of gender policing by peers and teachers.

Participation in School Events and Extracurricular Activities

In many schools, LGBT students are deterred or effectively excluded from participating in school events, extra-curriculars, or everyday activities because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. As a result, they are deprived of the full education that their heterosexual, cisgender peers enjoy.

Across many US states, transgender students face restrictions related to participation in sports and other extracurricular activities. The treatment of transgender students in public school sports varies considerably from state to state.

In some states, students are allowed to participate consistent with their gender identity. In others, students may participate consistent with their gender identity if they have undergone some form of medical intervention, typically hormone treatments. A number of states use case-by-case evaluations or lack any guidelines to determine how students participate. And in some states, students are required to participate in extracurricular activities as their sex assigned at birth.

Although most of the issues that students identified with sports and extracurricular activities involved restrictions based on gender identity, some lesbian, gay, and bisexual students noted pervasive hostility on the basis of sexual orientation. Francesca K., an 18-year-old lesbian girl in Alabama, said:

Expression and Dress

LGBT students often experienced rigorous policing of how they dressed and expressed their gender. Wearing gender-affirming clothing is an important part of social transition, making such regulations particularly stressful and humiliating for transgender youth.

Sometimes, this policing of transgender and gender non-conforming youth happened during the school day. Caleb C., a gay non-binary 20-year-old in Utah, recalled a student who was routinely punished for wearing women's clothing.

At other times, policing happened at events and other occasions. Willow K., a 14-year-old transgender girl in Texas, recalled: "I tried to wear a dress-I bought my ticket, went to homecoming wearing a dress, and they didn't let me in and I didn't get my money back." Julian L., a 15-year-old gay transgender boy in South Dakota, observed that in JROTC: " I asked like five times last year if I could wear the men's uniform, and they said they'd look into it but never did.... I want to feel like the other guys."

Even when students were not punished, adults at times ridiculed them for gender non-conformity, including clothing. Adrian C., a 17-year-old student in Utah, said:

Glenda Elliott of the Alabama Safe Schools Coalition said no promo homo laws are invoked to justify censorship:

School Events

In some instances, school spirit events and competitions explicitly or implicitly excluded LGBT youth. For example, in some schools, same-sex couples were excluded from elections to the homecoming court or other school competitions. Malia E., an 18-year-old bisexual girl in Texas, recalled: "The sponsor for student council didn't allow us to put up two guys for homecoming court. She said, 'You don't have to try to make a statement.'" Carol G., an administrator in Texas, recalled an incident where "the senior class nominated two men for a cutest couples contest, and the teacher in charge took them out of it, and then lied to the administrator by saying they had withdrawn."

Even when parents complained, schools let the days proceed. Rhoda B., a parent in South Dakota, reached out to the high school to urge them to change the theme and was rebuffed: " I reached out to school board members, and every one of them, for the most part, said 'I can't believe they're doing it either'... but nobody did anything about it."

Gender Policing

Even in high school, students described being instructed to divide into teams of boys or girls, being seated in alternating boy-girl patterns, or being addressed in gendered ways, with rigid policing of who goes where. Susanna K., a parent and school photographer in Utah said:

Names and Pronouns

Students spoke favorably of strategies teachers employed to ensure their gender identity was respected. One common tactic was to pass out notecards at the beginning of the year where students could write information they wanted the teacher to know; for example, their preferred name and pronouns, any medical information that might be pertinent, any disabilities or learning difficulties, or other concerns.

While some schools and teachers invited students to identify their names and pronouns, a more typical arrangement was that it was up to transgender students to identify themselves and their name and pronouns to their teachers on a case-by-case, class-by-class basis. Putting the onus on students to inform teachers was a stressful process, particularly when teachers rejected the student's gender identity. Because schools and school personnel typically did not indicate to students that they would respect names and pronouns, some students declined to take the risk of volunteering that information.

Tanner H., a pansexual 18-year-old in Texas, said:

Anthony G., a 16-year-old demisexual transgender boy in Texas, said:

In many instances, students observed that they had informed teachers of their identified name and pronouns, but teachers failed to use them and routinely misgendered the student before their peers. Silas G., a 15-year-old transgender boy in South Dakota, said:

Paolo V., a 19-year-old transgender man in Texas, recalled:

A further effect of misgendering in class was to stigmatize transgender students in front of peers. Charlie O., a 17-year-old pansexual genderfluid student in Texas, said of another student:

Tristan O., a 21-year-old transgender man in Pennsylvania, agreed:

Record Keeping

The use of incorrect names and pronouns was exacerbated by administrators' refusal or failure to update student information in school records. Some transgender students said they were told the school was unable to update any school records unless they had legally changed their name and gender. Administrators in other schools did update student information without incident, however, particularly in their internal records.

Willow K., a 14-year-old transgender girl in Texas, said:

While schools do have recordkeeping obligations related to statewide testing, social services, and other legal requirements, as well as entry into the Selective Service System, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and other federal programs, some schools have demonstrated that internal systems can be successfully modified to include spaces for identified name and gender, such that that information appears on roll call, grading sheets, and other internal systems.

Schools may not realize that in many instances, documents and materials that reflect a student's gender need not include gender at all. Where gender is pertinent, schools can either provide a menu of options beyond male and female or, ideally, leave an open-ended space for students to provide the gender with which they identify. Systems can be put in place for students to change their identified gender in school records, recognizing that the gender on a student's birth certificate or initial records in kindergarten may not be the student's gender in middle school or high school.

Graduation

Many of the human rights problems LGBT students face in schools also undermine their right to education. The US Constitution does not guarantee the right to education but the laws or constitutions of all 50 US states recognize that all children are entitled to primary and secondary education. The right to education is protected under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The US has signed but not ratified the ICESCR and is therefore not bound by its provisions. However, the ICESCR provides an important source of guidance as to the necessary content of the right to education and the measures needed to uphold it.

Violence and Bullying

Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) speaks directly to the need to protect children from all forms of physical and mental violence. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the expert body charged with interpreting state obligations under the CRC, has emphasized that bullying constitutes physical or mental violence against children and that it "not only harms a child's physical and psychological integrity and well-being in the immediate term, but often has severe impact on his or her development, education, and social integration in the medium and long term." UNICEF has similarly urged states to take steps to curb anti-LGBT bullying, noting "robust evidence to suggest that LGBT children and youth exposed to discrimination are more likely to consider or attempt suicide than their peers."

Freedoms of Expression, Association, and Assembly

As part of the right to freedom of expression, Article 19 of the ICCPR recognizes the "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds." This right is not restricted to adults; it is guaranteed to "everyone." The Convention on the Rights of the Child reaffirms that children, like adults, have "freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing, or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice." The absence of education related to LGBT issues and the continued existence of no promo homo laws undermines the right to freedom of expression for both students and teachers. The UN Human Rights Committee, reviewing a conviction under Russia's law prohibiting "propaganda of homosexuality among minors," thus concluded that "there is no doubt that there has been a restriction on the exercise of the author's right to freedom of expression" under such laws.

Right to Privacy

While making every effort to ensure that the school environment welcomes and includes LGBT students, education policies should also seek to ensure respect for LGBT students' privacy. In particular, schools should take steps not only to respect the gender identity of transgender students, but to refrain from treating those students in a manner that could "out" them against their will to other members of the school community. In practice there is substantial overlap between many of the steps needed to display full respect for a transgender student's gender identity and those needed to protect their privacy-such as consistent use of students' preferred names and pronouns, reflecting their gender identity.

Discrimination

Education, Personal Development, and the School Environment

To State Legislatures

Ensure that state laws against bullying and harassment include enumerated protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Ensure that state laws against bullying and harassment respect student confidentiality and do not encourage disclosure of a student's sexual orientation or gender identity to parents without prior discussions with the student;

Ensure that state non-discrimination laws include explicit protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, particularly in education, employment, and public accommodations;

Repeal laws that preclude local school districts from providing enumerated protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Repeal laws that prohibit or restrict discussion of LGBT issues in schools;

Enact laws that provide for comprehensive sexuality education in schools that is medically and scientifically accurate, is inclusive of LGBT youth, and covers same-sex activity on equal footing with other sexual activity;

Repeal laws that require parental permission to join GSAs and access other age-appropriate resources and support;

Enact laws permitting transgender students to access facilities and participate in classes, sports teams, and extracurricular activities in accordance with their gender identity;

Modify any building regulations that require particular numbers or percentages of gendered restrooms in public or commercial buildings to permit the designation of all-gender restrooms.

To State Departments of Education

Ensure that teachers, counselors, and other staff receive sufficient training and support to intervene in bullying and harassment when it occurs;

Ensure that teachers, counselors, and other staff receive training to familiarize them with the issues LGBT students might face;

Promulgate model guidelines for school districts to follow to make schools safe and inclusive for LGBT youth;

Develop a system to integrate school records that reflect a student's name and pronouns with state operated databases and standardized testing.

To School Administrators

Ensure that school policies against bullying and harassment include enumerated protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Ensure that school policies against bullying and harassment establish and clearly specify what constitutes bullying, procedures for victims to lodge complaints, consequences for perpetrators, and protections against retaliation;

Notify students that cyberbullying is unacceptable, establish clear reporting guidelines, and train staff to identify and respond to incidents. Have systems in place to document cyberbullying, report it to authorities when appropriate, and offer counseling and support to students who are targeted.

Ensure that school policies against bullying and harassment are circulated to the school community and clearly understood by students, faculty, staff, and third-party providers operating in the school setting;

Require a response to all reported incidents of bullying and harassment, whether or not the victim files a written complaint;

Require schools to document all incidents of bullying and harassment and how the incident was addressed;

Ensure that the school provide comprehensive sexuality education that is inclusive of LGBT youth, covers same-sex activity on equal footing with other sexual activity, and is medically and scientifically accurate;

Ensure that GSAs and other LGBT student organizations are permitted to form and operate on the same terms as all other student organizations;

Consider facilitating and supporting the formation of GSAs and other LGBT student organizations at the middle school level;

Ensure that same-sex couples are able to date, display affection, and attend dances and other school functions on the same terms as all other student couples;

Ensure that students are able to access facilities, express themselves, and participate in classes, sports teams, and extracurricular activities in accordance with their gender identity;

Consider erecting stalls, barriers, and privacy curtains to maximize student privacy in all bathrooms, locker rooms, and shared facilities;

Designate all-gender restrooms in easily accessible locations throughout the school where feasible, particularly where single-user restrooms are currently gendered;

Incorporate all-gender restrooms and private changing and shower areas into new construction of school facilities;

Modify school recordkeeping systems to allow students to specify the name and pronouns they wish to use in school and ensure those identifiers are respected by staff and faculty and reflected in class lists, yearbooks, diplomas, and other documentation, to the extent permitted by law;

Create avenues for graduates to obtain updated school records and diplomas consistent with their gender identity;

Take steps to ensure that agender or non-binary students are able to fully participate throughout the school environment.

To the US Congress

Enact the Equality Act or similar legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, education, federal funding, and public accommodations;

Enact the Student Non-Discrimination Act or similar legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools;

Enact the Safe Schools Improvement Act or similar legislation to encourage states to enact strong policies to prevent bullying and harassment that are inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity;

Enact the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act or similar legislation to support comprehensive sexuality education and restrict funding to health education programs that are medically inaccurate, scientifically ineffective, or unresponsive to the needs of LGBT youth.

To the US Department of Education

Develop a system to integrate school records that reflect a student's name and pronouns with federally operated databases and programs like Selective Service Registration and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Ryan Thoreson, researcher in the LGBT Rights Program, wrote this report based on research undertaken from November 2015 to May 2016. Additional interviews were conducted by Michael Bochenek, senior counsel in the Children's Rights Division.

The report was reviewed by Graeme Reid, director of the LGBT Rights Program; Michael Bochenek, senior counsel in the Children's Rights Division; Megan McLemore, senior researcher in the Health and Human Rights Division; Antonio Ginatta, US advocacy director; Chris Albin-Lackey, senior Legal advisor; and Danielle Haas, senior Program editor. Production assistance was provided by Oliva Hunter, Publications associate; Fitzroy Hepkins, administrative manager; and Jose Martinez, senior coordinator.

Human Rights Watch would like to thank M. Dru Levasseur of Lambda Legal and the experts and organizations that assisted us in reaching out to potential interviewees, especially Youth First in Dallas, TX; LGBTQ Saves in Fort Worth, TX; GALA Youth in Carrollton, TX; Hatch Youth in Houston, TX; Out Youth in Austin, TX; the Utah Pride Center in Salt Lake City, UT; Equality Utah in Salt Lake City, UT; the ACLU of South Dakota in Sioux Falls, SD; the Center for Equality in Sioux Falls, SD; the Black Hills Center for Equality in Rapid City, SD; the Magic City Acceptance Project in Birmingham, AL; the Alabama Alliance for Healthy Youth in Birmingham, AL; the Alabama Safe Schools Coalition in Birmingham, AL; Montgomery Pride United in Montgomery, AL; Free2Be in Huntsville, AL; the ACLU of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA; the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, PA; the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, PA; the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in Allentown, PA; and the NEPA Rainbow Alliance in Pittston, PA.

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This report documents a range of problems facing LGBT students. The concerns include bullying and harassment, exclusion of LGBT topics from school curricula and resources, restrictions on LGBT student groups, and discrimination and bigotry from both classmates and school personnel on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

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This Paw Research Center article goes over statistics on who's accepting of the LGBTQ community and compares people who still believe that being gay is a sin.

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This Paw Research Center article goes over statistics on who's accepting of the LGBTQ community and compares people who still believe that being gay is a sin.

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As the Supreme Court readies its long-awaited ruling on same-sex marriage, two Pew Research Center surveys this spring - one of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender adults and the other of the American public - found a common thread: that society as a whole has become more accepting of gays and lesbians.

That finding has its caveats. While an overwhelming number (92%) of LBGT adults saw society as having become more accepting over the last decade, many reported continued discrimination, taking various forms. On the part of the general public, opposition to same-sex marriage remains substantial, and religious beliefs are a major factor. Just under half of Americans (45%) say they think engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin.

The surveys do not offer a perfect comparison. The LGBT survey included bisexuals (who comprise 40% of the LGBT survey) and transgender adults. The survey of the general public focused on views of gay men and lesbians.

But taken together, the surveys offer some commonalities in several areas: acceptance, the experience of telling friends and family, the importance of personal contact, and in the difficult terrain of religion.

Acceptance

While LGBT adults say society is more accepting, just 19% say there is "a lot" of social acceptance today and many say they have been victims of discrimination, such as being subject to slurs or jokes, or suffering rejection by a family member.

The number of Americans who had a favorable view of gay men stands at 55%, an 18 percentage point increase compared to a decade earlier; 58% had a favorable opinion of lesbians, a 19 percentage point increase over the same time span.

A March-April survey of the general public also showed that, in recent years, there has been a decline in the percentage of Americans who think that more gays and lesbians raising children is a bad thing for American society. Currently, 35% view this as a negative trend for society. While that is unchanged from 2011, it represents a 15-point decline since 2007 (from 50%).

Coming Out

About one-in-five adults (19%) say they would be very upset if they learned their child was gay or lesbian. That contrasts with 1985 when 64% said in a Los Angeles Times survey that they would be "very upset" if their child told them he or she was gay or lesbian.

While public attitudes have been changing significantly over the last few decades about a child "coming out," the experience is still a difficult one for many LGBT adults, according to our survey. Some 56% of all LGBT adults have told their mother about their sexual orientation or gender identity and 39% have told their fathers. Within the LGBT population, roughly seven-in-ten gay men (70%) and lesbians (67%) have told their mothers, while 53% of gay men and 45% of lesbians have told their fathers.

About six-in-ten (59%) of all LGBT adults who have told their mother said the experience was a difficult one, and 65% of those who told their father said the same. Relatively few said it resulted in their relationships growing weaker.

Personal Contact

An overwhelming percentage of Americans (87%) say they know someone who is gay or lesbian, compared to 61% who said so twenty years ago in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. The survey of the general public found that 23% say they personally know "a lot" of gay or lesbian people, while 44% say they know some, and 19% have only one or two gay or lesbian acquaintances.

The survey also found that 68% of those who know a lot of people who are gays and lesbians - and 61% who have close friends or family members who are gay or lesbian - say they support same-sex marriage

LGBT adults believe that greater social acceptance has come as a result of more Americans knowing someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to our survey. Individual relationships and the role of well-known public figures, like Ellen DeGeneres, are viewed as being the most helpful things in fostering acceptance. Seven-in-ten LGBT adults say people knowing someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender helps a lot in making society more accepting, and 24% say this helps a little.

Religion

The survey of LGBT adults found that many in that community saw major religious institutions as unfriendly toward them. About three-in-ten (29%) said they had been made to feel unwelcome at a place of worship or religious organization at some point in their lives. The Muslim religion (84%), the Mormon Church (83%), the Catholic Church (79%) and evangelical churches (73%) were viewed as more unfriendly than the Jewish religion or non-evangelical Protestant churches.

While the survey of the general public found that, overall, the percentage of Americans who say homosexuality should be accepted by society increased from 47% to 60% over the last decade, opinions vary widely based on religious affiliation and practices. Among those who attend religious services once a week or more, those saying homosexuality should be accepted went from 33% a decade ago to 41% today.

When the nearly one-third of Americans who say homosexuality should be discouraged are asked in an open-ended question why they feel this way, by far the most common reason - given by 52% - is that homosexuality conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs.

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How LGBT adults see society and how the public sees them

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As the Supreme Court readies its long-awaited ruling on same-sex marriage, two Pew Research Center surveys this spring - one of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender adults and the other of the American public - found a common thread: that society as a whole has become more accepting of gays and lesbians.

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This article talks about the discrimination that happens in the community.

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This article talks about the discrimination that happens in the community.

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In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, YSE authors Michelle Bell and Leo Goldsmith ’20 MEM lay out the case for a more inclusive environmental justice movement for the LGBTQ+ community, who are disproportionately affected by environmental exposures.

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I have always been a part of the community but became an active member in 2020. I have a great-aunt who has been a part of this community for many years. She has told me about many experiences that she has had. She lived in a small town and shared her struggles being apart of this community. 

# data[].attributes.subject
I have always been a part of the community but became an active member in 2020. I have a great-aunt who has been a part of this community for many years. She has told me about many experiences that she has had. She lived in a small town and shared her struggles being apart of this community. 