LGBTQ Rights and the Labeling Theory

Hello Katie. Thank you for sharing your post. I like how you incorporated Greek cultures concept of sexuality. In fact history and culture have been very influential in how human sexuality is perceived. I like how your post talks about “The Label Theory” you state in your post “There is a theory called the “Label Theory” and it basically states that “people come to identify and behave in ways that reflect how others label them”. This is definitely a challenge for people in the LGBTQ community because they do not see or feel how the world perceives them.

This can be challenging when they attempt to live there day to day life. For some heterosexuals the opposite lifestyle is confusing because they do not fit into the labels that we designed for them. This can be see in the concept of family. There have been heated debates centered around the concept of family for homosexual couples. Also, homosexuals have been challenged with the task of admitting to their families that they are attracted to the same sex. Homosexuality has been devalued for some time in Euro-American culture, although less so now than 50 years ago. The rights of gays and lesbians are often asserted, and gay and lesbian families, parenting and stable couple relations are not uncommon. This suggests that homosexuality differs little from heterosexuality and demonstrates that gays and lesbians are not antifamily. There is a train of thought that gays and lesbians are not just imitating straight culture, but exploiting ambiguous dominant cultural symbols by inhabiting their interstices (Schneider, 1997).

History is very influential in our perception of homosexuality. In fact because homosexuality went against what the world considered normal it was assumed that they had mental disorders. If was not until society shifted this view that it became accepted. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2nd ed.; DSM-II; American Psychiatric Association, 1968). Clinicians subsequently began conducting psychotherapy with gays and lesbians not in order to change their sexuality but to address the psychological effects of homophobia and associated problems. Family-related issues such as the impact of coming out to relatives became an important dimension of psychotherapy that normalized same-sex desire, identity, and relationships, even amid contemporary invocations of family values as grounds for opposing gays and lesbians’ political claims (Weinstein, 2018). This change was very influential in changing the way the world perceived the homosexual population.

References

1. Schneider, D. M. (1997). The power of culture: notes on some aspects of gay and lesbian kinship in America today. Cultural Anthropology, (2), 270. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsggo&AN=edsgcl.19632924&site=eds-live&scope=site
2. Weinstein, D. (2018). Sexuality, therapeutic culture, and family ties in the United States after 1973. History of Psychology, 21(3), 273–289. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1037/hop0000043

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