A Social Worker's Perspective on the Gay and Lesbian Community

A Social Worker's Perspective on the Gay and Lesbian Community

The community I chose to research is the Gay and Lesbian community. I chose to look at this community because, as I meet more and more people in my life, I have found that I come into contact with many Gay and Lesbian people, and to understand their issues, would be beneficial to a social worker. As Berkman and Zinberg (1997), states, social workers are "susceptible to absorbing the explicit and implicit biases held by mainstream society." I personally feel that the more you learn about other communities, its history and its struggles, it gives us a broader range of understanding and empathy, in which to do our work.

Up until the 1960s, no one questioned the idea that the traditional family was the cornerstone of American society and essential to its very survival. A traditional family was a man and a woman, married to each other, who had children together and reared them in a community full of other such families. A family thirty plus years ago, meant Mom, Dad, the kids, and on holidays, Grandpa, Grandma, aunts, cousins, and in-laws. In those days, a man and a woman didn't just move into an apartment and live together. Occasionally it would occur, but the practice was not common, and in small town America it almost never happened.

In such a world, then, how were homosexuals regarded?

First, no one thirty years ago thought a lot about homosexuality. It was not a topic that preoccupied the average American. You didn't hear it discussed on talk shows or depicted in movies. You didn't see so-called gay pride parades in our major cities. You weren't bombarded with political pronouncements on the subject. You didn't have homosexuals ...

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