Evaluating the phobias, attitudes, and cultural competence of Master of Social Work students toward the LGBT populations

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests there is bias toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons by social workers; unfortunately, little research has been conducted to examine Master of Social Work (MSW) students' views toward these populations. The purpose of this study was to develop an assessment scale to evaluate the attitudes, phobias, and cultural competence of MSW students toward the LGBT populations. METHODS: An assessment scale was developed and administered to MSW students (n = 173) at a Midwestern American university. RESULTS: The majority of MSW students reported low phobia and a positive attitude toward the LGBT populations, yet participants reported having a low level of cultural competence in serving LGBT clients. CONCLUSION: More education and training is needed for MSW students to effectively serve the LGBT populations.     

A Systematic Review of the Psychometric Properties of Composite LGBT Prejudice and Discrimination Scales

ABSTRACT

Prejudice and discrimination against LGBT individuals is widespread and has been shown to have negative consequences for sexual and gender minority persons’ physical and psychological wellbeing. A recent and problematic trend in the literature is to compositely measure prejudice toward and discrimination against LGBT persons. As such, a review of the psychometric properties of scales assessing, in a combinatory fashion, negative attitudes and/or behaviors toward LGBT persons is warranted. In the current study, 32 scales were identified, and their psychometric properties were evaluated. Most of the scales reviewed did not provide sufficient information regarding item development and refinement, scale dimensionality, scale score reliability, or validity. Properties of the reviewed scales are summarized, and recommendations for better measurement practice are articulated.     

Unraveling Health Disparities Among Sexual and Gender Minorities: A Commentary on the Persistent Impact of Stigma

ABSTRACT

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) populations experience disparities in health outcomes, both physical and mental, compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers. This commentary confronts the view held by some researchers that the disparate rates of mental health problems reported among LGBT populations are the consequences of pursuing a particular life trajectory, rather than resulting from the corrosive and persistent impact of stigma. Suggesting that mental health disparities among LGBT populations arise internally, de novo, when individuals express non-heterosexual and non-conforming gender identities ignores the vast body of evidence documenting the destructive impact of socially mediated stigma and systemic discrimination on health outcomes for a number of minorities, including sexual and gender minorities. Furthermore, such thinking is antithetical to widely accepted standards of health and wellbeing because it implies that LGBT persons should adopt and live out identities that contradict or deny their innermost feelings of self.     

Health Needs and Experiences of a LGBT Population in Georgia and South Carolina

ABSTRACT

The 2016 Municipal Equality Index rated Augusta, the largest city in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA), as one of the least lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) friendly cities in America. To understand the context of our region in relation to LGBT wellness, we conducted the first LGBT health needs assessment of the CSRA, assessing physical and mental health status and health care needs and experiences in the community. Participants (N = 436) were recruited using venue and snowball sampling and completed an anonymous online survey. Overall, the health problems experienced (i.e., obesity, depression) were not uniformly experienced across sexual orientation and gender identity; some groups experienced significantly higher rates of these conditions than others. Similarly, transgender individuals in particular reported higher rates of negative experiences with health care providers. Regional and national dissemination of these findings is critical to reducing health disparities and improving wellness of our local LGBT community.     

Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual Individuals’ Perceptions of American Religious Traditions

ABSTRACT

The cumulative alienation sexual minorities experience from American mainline religious groups may leave them feeling disillusioned and even hostile toward the religious organizations that have historically rejected them. However, research to date has not explored sexual minorities’ perceptions of religious traditions in the United States. The current study examines the variations between lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults’ (LGB) perceptions of whether religious traditions are friendly/neutral or unfriendly toward the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population. Using data from the Pew Research Center 2013 Survey of LGBT Adults, the author conducts separate binary logistic regression analyses examining whether four religious traditions—evangelical Protestantism, the Catholic Church, the Jewish religion, and mainline Protestantism—are generally perceived as friendly/neutral or unfriendly toward LGBT people. The findings from this study offer rare insight on sexual minorities’ perceptions of major religious traditions and illustrates that sexual minorities have a complex relationship with religion.     

Do Social Workers Apply “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” to Gay,Lesbian, Bisexual,and Transpersons in the South?

ABSTRACT

Across the United States there has been a spate of legislative bills and initiatives that blatantly stigmatize and discriminate against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This study was a cross-sectional, exploratory survey designed to measure the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of Tennessee social workers and future social workers toward the LGBT population and toward proposed discriminatory legislation. A 3-way factorial ANOVA investigated the effects of political affiliation, religious affiliation, and social contact on the dependent measures. Significant main effects were found. Self-reported political affiliation was found to be the most important factor predicting LGBT acceptance and LGBT respect among this sample.     

Assessing Experiences With LGBT Microaggressions in the Workplace: Development and Validation of the Microaggression Experiences at Work Scale

ABSTRACT

LGBT people experience microaggressions in the workplace; however, limited research exists in this area partly due to a lack of psychometrically sound instruments measuring the prevalence of LGBT microaggressions in the workplace. To address this gap, an empirical study was conducted and the LGBT-MEWS was created and tested. The LGBT-MEWS is a 27-item self-report scale comprising three subscales. Each subscale conceptually represents a different domain through which microaggressions impact LGBT employees: (1) workplace values, (2) heteronormative assumptions, and (3) cisnormative culture. The results of testing indicated that the subscales demonstrate strong reliability and validity.     

Creating Welcoming Spaces for Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender (LGBT) Patients: An Evaluation of the Health Care Environment

ABSTRACT

Health outcomes are affected by patient, provider, and environmental factors. Previous studies have evaluated patient-level factors; few focusing on environment. Safe clinical spaces are important for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities. This study evaluates current models of LGBT health care delivery, identifies strengths and weaknesses, and makes recommendations for LGBT spaces. Models are divided into LGBT-specific and LGBT-embedded care delivery. Advantages to both models exist, and they provide LGBT patients different options of healthcare. Yet certain commonalities must be met: a clean and confidential system. Once met, LGBT-competent environments and providers can advocate for appropriate care for LGBT communities, creating environments where they would want to seek care.     

Openings: On the Journal of Homosexuality,Volume 1, Issue 1

ABSTRACT

This article serves as one of the supplementary pieces of this special issue on “Mapping Queer Bioethics,” in which we take a solipsistic turn to “map” the Journal of Homosexuality itself. Here, the author examines Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Journal of Homosexuality and asks whether the journal’s first contributors might reveal a historically problematic relationship whereby the categories of front-line LGBT health advocates in the 1970s might be incommensurate with the post-AIDS, queer politics that would follow in decades to come.     

Reshaping Time: Recommendations for Suicide Prevention in LBGT Populations

ABSTRACT

This article serves as one of the supplementary pieces of this special issue on “Mapping Queer Bioethics,” in which we take a solipsistic turn to “map” the Journal of Homosexuality itself. Here, the author examines the journal’s 2011 consensus recommendations for the prevention of LGBT suicide. Invoking the axiom approach of Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick’s seminal Epistemology of the Closet, the author argues that merely offering practical guidelines at the level of the demonstrative and the instructive may not be sufficient models to address the urgency of suicide rates in LGBTQ youth populations.     

Validation of the Beliefs about Children’s Adjustment in Same-Sex Families Scale in Italian University Students

ABSTRACT

Assessing attitudes toward same-sex parenting has important implications for both intervention and prevention programs designed to foster the tolerance and normality of sexual and family diversity. Few empirically validated measures of rejection of same-sex parenting have been developed. The current study examined the psychometric properties of an Italian translation of the Beliefs about Children’s Adjustment in Same-Sex Families Scale, a 14-item scale distributed in two subscales that measure direct and subtle rejection toward same-sex parenting, for its use in assessing heterosexual people’s attitudes toward same-sex parents in Italy. The sample consisted of 344 Italian heterosexual university students (113 men) with a mean age of 20.48 years (SD = 1.60). The results showed that the scale has a good factor structure (via confirmatory factor analysis) and satisfactory reliability and acceptable criterion-related validity. Therefore, the BCASSFS can be used to measure opposition toward gay and lesbian parenting in the Italian context.     

Considering the Role of Nativity in the Health and Psychological Wellbeing of Black LGBT Adults

ABSTRACT

Recent scholars have underscored how the experiences of LGBT people of color cannot be fully understood by considering only the independent contributions of race and sexual orientation. Framed by an intersectional lens, the current study seeks to address this gap in understanding by considering the role of nativity on the health and wellbeing of Black sexual minority adults; we also examined the moderating effects of family support and racial community climate on this relationship. Using national data from the Social Justice Sexuality Project (N = 2,166), we discovered that foreign-born Black LGBT adults had similar levels of psychological wellbeing and physical health as their native counterparts; family support and racial community climate did not moderate this relationship. Our findings did, however, substantiate the importance of family and community support for all Black LGBT adults, regardless of immigration status. Implications of this finding, in addition to directions for future intersectional work on racial minority LGBT people, are discussed.     

el barrio de La Chueca of Madrid,Spain: An Emerging Epicenter of the Global LGBT Civil Rights Movement

The purpose of this article is to examine and deconstruct the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) barrio (community) of Chueca in Madrid, Spain, from political and sociological perspectives. First, we develop a critical framework for understanding the historical, political, social, cultural, and economic changes that took place in Spain after Franco's death in relation to LGBT issues. Ethnographic research was conducted from May to July 2007 in the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona, and Ibiza, and focused primarily on the community of Chueca. A social constructionist perspective was used to examine sociocultural issues in this ethnosexual community through an in-depth study of the dynamics of this barrio. The theoretical framework of intersectionality and the constitutive relations among social identities is exemplified in Chueca. Hence, individuals in Chueca and their intersectionality perspective reveal that their identities influence and shape their beliefs about gender and symbols. We describe how Chueca reflects recent progressive changes in LGBT-related laws and statutes drafted by the federal government and how these have influenced the high level of societal acceptance toward intimate same-sex relationships in Spain. Additionally, we exemplify and present Chueca as an enclave that has been affected by the globalization of the private market, “gay” identity, and enterprise, having a direct effect on cultural norms and social behaviors. Last, we examine the current state of the Chueca community relative to other developing LGBT Latino/a communities in the United States.     

LGBT-Competence in Social Work Education: The Relationship of School Contexts to Student Sexual Minority Competence

This study examined the relationship between master of social work programs’ (MSW) support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (LGBT-competence) and the sexual minority competence (LGB-competence) of social work students. Data were gathered from a sample of MSW program directors, faculty members, and students (N = 1385) within 34 MSW programs in the United States. A series of hierarchical linear models tested if a MSW program’s LGBT-competence was associated with the LGB-competence of its students. Results showed a significant relationship between organizational LGBT-competence and individual LGB-competence within schools of social work, and that programs with greater LGBT-competence also had students who felt more competent to work with sexual minorities. These findings suggest schools of social work can take substantive action at an organizational level to improve the professional LGB-competence of future social workers. Implications for social work education are discussed.     

Linking LGBT inclusion and national innovative capacity

This paper investigates the relationship between the social inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and technological innovation. It empirically establishes that LGBT inclusion helps foster human capital skills, thus strengthening national innovative capacity. Exploiting cross-country data, this research provides suggestive evidence that social tolerance towards homosexuality is positively correlated with the economic complexity index, a novel measure of cross-country differences in innovative capabilities. Individual-level analyses, based on data from the World Values Survey, reveal that surveyed respondents who self-report tolerance towards homosexual acts tend to have positive attitudes towards technological innovation, ceteris paribus. This lends credence to the international evidence. Further analyses indicate that the link between LGBT inclusion and innovation is partially mediated through the accumulation of human capital. The main findings suggest that the social exclusion of LGBT people, at least to some extent, impedes long-run economic development by hindering innovative activities.

     

YouTube as a Site of Counternarratives to Transnormativity

ABSTRACT

In this article, I discuss how transnormativity can be disrupted by not exaggerating the physical aspects of medical transition and by engaging in conversations around consequential sources of tension within gender and sexual minority communities, namely linguistic understandings of trans and gendered racism within white, gay, cisgender communities toward trans communities of color. This study is based on qualitative interviews with six trans YouTubers; these interviews were complemented by analyses of these YouTubers’ videos and select comments on these videos. With this exploratory study, I aim to provide nuance to existing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) YouTube literature through highlighting the experiences of nonbinary trans vloggers and trans vloggers of color, regardless of medical transition status, as well as contribute a transfeminist analysis to ongoing conversations around transnormativity within sociology, cultural and media studies, and queer and trans theory.     

Mapping Queer Bioethics: Space,Place, and Locality

ABSTRACT

This article, which introduces the special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality on “Mapping Queer Bioethics,” begins by offering an overview of the analytical scope of the issue. Specifically, the first half of this essay raises critical questions central to the concept of a space-related queer bioethics, such as: How do we appreciate and understand the special needs of queer parties given the constraints of location, space, and geography? The second half of this article describes each feature article in the issue, as well as the subsequent special sections on the ethics of reading literal, health-related maps (“Cartographies”) and scrutinizing the history of this journal as concerns LGBT health (“Mapping the Journal of Homosexuality”).     

LGBT Family Lawyers and Same-Sex Marriage Recognition: How Legal Change Shapes Professional Identity and Practice

ABSTRACT

Lawyers who practice family law for LGBT clients are key players in the tenuous and evolving legal environment surrounding same-sex marriage recognition. Building on prior research on factors shaping the professional identities of lawyers generally, and activist lawyers specifically, I examine how practice within a rapidly changing, patchwork legal environment shapes professional identity for this group of lawyers. I draw on interviews with 21 LGBT family lawyers to analyze how the unique features of LGBT family law shape their professional identities and practice, as well as their predictions about the development of the practice in a post-Obergefell world. Findings reveal that the professional identities and practice of LGBT family lawyers are shaped by uncertainty, characteristics of activist lawyering, community membership, and community service. Individual motivations and institutional forces work to generate a professional identity that is resilient and dynamic, characterized by skepticism and distrust coupled with flexibility and creativity. These features are likely to play a role in the evolution of the LGBT family lawyer professional identity post-marriage equality.     

Assessing LGBT People’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

ABSTRACT

Although lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have achieved increased acceptance and access to social institutions in recent years, they have continued to be confronted with persistent homophobic attitudes, including from U.S. law enforcement personnel. Police culture often fosters these beliefs, and consequently results in the under-policing of LGBT citizens when victimized, but over-policing in places of leisure. This relationship is exacerbated when considering the intersectional effect of gender and sexual orientation, undoubtedly impacting legitimacy perceptions due to perceived (and actual) procedural injustice. Using original data collected at an LGBT festival in Arizona (N = 428), the current study examines the relationship between procedural justice and perceptions of police legitimacy among a historically marginalized population. Implications for theory and policy are discussed, with special attention given to contextualizing the findings within the current legitimacy crisis faced by American law enforcement.     

Queering Poetics: The Impact of Poetry on LGBT+ Identity in Singaporean Adolescents

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explores identity formation in LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, and how reading, writing, and listening to poetry shapes Singaporean adolescents’ social identities as queer people. Analyzing in-depth interviews with nine LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, four themes were found: (1) LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents interested in poetry believe that reading, writing, and/or listening to poetry has been an integral part of constructing their queer identities; (2) the poems that have impacted LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents’ queer identities the most have been informed by queer sociocultural values; (3) poetry provides validation to LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents that their identities are real and that others before them have experienced the same challenges they are going through; and (4) poetry serves as a third space for LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents to safely construct their growing queer identities. Implications for teachers, counselors, and adult supporters of queer Singaporean adolescents are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.