Gay/Lesbian Studies - Discrimination in Term Paper

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As of August 2001, 12 states, as well as the District of Columbia, had laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation" (Horvath & Ryan 115). In the case, High Tech Gays v. Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office (1987), a district court held that lesbians and gay men constituted a quasi-suspect class because "homosexuals have historically been the object of pernicious and sustained hostility, and it is fair to say that discrimination against homosexuals is likely... To reflect deep-seated prejudice rather than... rationality"; however, the court also found that federal policy did not pass even rational review and the case was reversed in 1990 (cited in Lewis at 539). Complicating matters for homosexuals and civil rights advocates alike today is the nebulous and hidden nature of some of the discriminatory practices that might adversely affect homosexuals in the workplace today, and these issues are discussed further below.

Types of Discrimination.

Much of the discrimination that takes place in the American workplace against gay men and lesbians appears to be based on homophobia, or a fear or dislike of homosexuals by human resource specialists or others within an organization. Homophobia is defined by Cheng (2003) as "the irrational fear of people and things related to lesbians and gay men" (323). The author notes that there are two types of homophobia:

a) externalized and (b) internalized; externalized homophobia comes from the heterosexual community who dislike or fear homosexuals (Cheng 323). Black's Law Dictionary (1990) defines discrimination as "the effect of a statute or established practice which confers particular privileges on a class arbitrarily selected from a large number of persons, all of whom stand in the same relation to the privileges granted and between whom and those not favored no reasonable distinction can be found" (467).

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Therefore, all things considered, an individual's attitudes toward lesbians and gay men "should be antecedent to actual hiring discrimination" (Horvath & Ryan 116). Alas, "reasonable" and "should be" may not win out against firmly established organizational human resources policies that are intended to prevent the hiring of gays and lesbians outright, or to diminish their ability to be promoted over their heterosexual peers (Lewis 539).

Conclusion

In spite of the growing acceptability of gay men and lesbians over the past three decades (Cheng 323), it is reasonable to posit that many of the longstanding practices that prevent gay men and lesbians from achieving equality in the American workplace are not going away anytime soon. Absent more aggressive oversight and prosecution of existing laws against discrimination of homosexuals in the workplace as well as passage of similar laws in the remaining states and at the federal level, homosexual employees in many regions of the country may continue to experience the adverse effects of discrimination based solely on their sexual orientation, a practice that defies any legitimate argument in its support, and one that has no place in 21st century America.

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