Social Problems Of LGBT Individuals

Based on open.lib.umn.edu, social problem also called social issue; it is a state that has negative impacts to a large number of population which gives a need to address the problem.

Response of Society to Homosexuality

According to CPSYC, individuals who have different sexual orientation, LGBT individuals, experiences discrimination and receives isolation from the society. Social oppression, pressure from social groups including families, may lead to experiencing anxiety disorder.

Some LGBT individuals are not accepted by the society that they live in and are limited to job opportunities. Thus, making them move to another residency or they had to pretend as heterosexuals to gain a place in society.

Based on a research, older LGBT people who experienced intolerance historically plays a significant part in their current well-being, an emerging on feelings of people in the same age range from the LGBT community. For older LGBT people, further discrimination based upon their experiences of times when society was very different. It was concluded that suicide rates in older LGBT older people are higher since some of them were unable to engage with the significant social and political changes over the past decade.

Based on an Australian study in 1999, as rate of posttraumatic of youth ages 14-21 years old, “LGB youth were more likely to experience generalized anxiety disorder compared with heterosexual youth”. Several stressors such as discrimination, expected homonegativity, concealing one’s sexual orientation, and internalized homonegativiy. With these stressors, individuals begin to think less of themselves.

Teasing LGB students appear to have a direct effect on the depression and suicidal rates – suicidal feelings, alcohol and marijuana use, and unexcused absences from school.

Cyberbullying

Based on a well-publicized case on 2010, an 18-year-old boy, Tyler Clementi, committed suicide by jumping from the George Washington Bridge. This happened after his college roommate posted a video of him kissing another man online.

Some LGBT youth who experienced bullying chose not to report the happening to the school officials due to the feeling that improvements were impossible to happen or due to the feeling that it could worsen the situation. Some LGBT youth who chose to report the happening, ended up pointing out that the school officials did not attempt to improve the situations.

Religion on Homosexuality

Based on a study entitled, “Transitional Age Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth”, religion was characterized as a form of distress that conflicts with one’s sexual identity. LGBT individuals experience harassment in church, receive negative messages from their church group, and are labeled as sinners that they will go to hell for being part of the LGBT community. According to some monotheistic religions like Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, define homosexuality as a sin and it is referred as “something forbidden”.

According to Marianne Duddy-Burke, an executive director from USA stated, “A lot of gay and lesbian Latinas and Latinos are out in English but not in their Spanish-speaking church”. It is because some of them find a way to be spiritually involved with the Catholic Faith, but not all elements of it.

Marisa Demeo, an out lesbian, once successful lawyer, and now have become a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia stated, "You have to work out your relationship with religion. I feel comfortable with my religious beliefs and I feel they are compatible with my life as a member of the GLBT community”.

Rogelio Z. Zepeda, a Mexican gay activist stated, "For ages, people have found a way to use religion and the Bible as an excuse to hate, ostracize and attack homosexuals," members, gay and straight, can also play an important role in educating the rest of the church and advocating for the acceptance of the LGBTQ community, he continued, "I take that as a challenge to change misconceptions about gays and lesbians; a challenge to confront those who do not practice Christ's teachings to love one another, and a challenge to be true to myself and accept the love that God gives me."