Essay On Historical Discrimination And Current Attitudes Toward LGBT Students In College

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Introduction College is a long way transition to adulthood for most teenagers, especially for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals who would usually find it harder socializing in a society of heteronormativity. Also, college is a place where students have relatively close relationship because they live, study and join in social gathering together. Entering college, everyone will be more or less exploring himself or herself, seeking companion and acceptance. However, as sexual/gender minorities, LGBT students experience more negative attitudes and discrimination. In this paper, I will use sociological imagination to explore some historical discrimination and current attitudes toward LGBT students in colleges. I will also …show more content…

In Associations Between Religious Personality Dimensions and Implicit Homosexual Prejudice, six scholars discussed implicit and explicit attitudes associated with personality toward homosexual and heterosexual students in a sample of predominately Protestant college students in the south-central United States. (ROWATT, TSANG, KELLY, LAMARTINA, MCCULLERS, & MCKINLEY, 2006) Expressing implicit attitude means that the actor may not fully aware at the moment of giving evaluative reaction. Their results showed that according to the self-reported assessment, most people expressed fairly negative attitudes and implicit prejudice toward gay people relative to heterosexual individuals. Also, as religious fundamentalism (RF) index increases, implicit attitudes toward homosexual compared to heterosexual individuals become more negative. Therefore, with stronger religious belief, one may discriminate homosexual people more implicitly. In other words, they give their prejudice through automatic evaluative reaction. Discrimination towards homosexuals is a inner part of their religious fundamentalism belief. (ROWATT, TSANG, KELLY, LAMARTINA, MCCULLERS, & MCKINLEY, 2006) The research gave some supporting theory of how and why religious people tend to be less open to sexual