Many people know that sexual orientation minorities are discriminated against, but could you recognize this prejudice if it happened to you or someone you know?
The LGBTQ community refers to a group of people who identify themselves as non-heterosexual orientation. This includes lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and questioning. These individuals undergo many forms of discrimination that can vary between different sexual orientations. Although heterosexuals can be discriminated against as well, it is much more common for sexual minorities to be the victims of prejudice. One form of discrimination is at the interpersonal level. This discrimination occurs from one individual or small group against another individual or small group. One common example of interpersonal sexual orientation discrimination would be not hiring someone because of their sexual orientation. Discrimination can also occur at the organizational level,which
usually occurs when an organization decides to treat one sexual orientation
group differently from others. These can
be acts derived from formal OR informal rules sanctioned by the company. Another form of discrimination occurs on a public macro-level, when laws exclude sexual minorities from rights or privileges given to heterosexuals. The image below is a depiction of states that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. It is very clear that there are many gaps in the protection of all people's rights!
In addition to separate levels of discrimination, LGBTQ victims can experience multiple levels of victimization. First, there is the primary victimization, which is the actual experience of an anti-gay hate crime. Then there is secondary victimization, which can occur due to the exposure of the person's sexual orientation. An example of this could be a gay man losing his job because he was the victim of a hate crime which exposed his sexual orientation to his job. Many government policies do not consider secondary victimization when creating laws against anti-gay hate crimes. Policies need to be revised to include protection from secondary victimization as well!
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