ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the application of what has been learned about the psychological lives of gay and lesbian individuals living in a hostile society to the work environment. Along with physical assault, common in its own right, job discrimination continues to pose one of the gravest civil rights threat in the lives of lesbian and gay citizens. The empirical basis for the demise of the illness model of homosexuality rested on a considerable body of research, which found that on psychological test instruments measuring psychopathology, gay and lesbian individuals could not be reliably differentiated from their heterosexual counterparts. Gay and lesbian individuals have unique features in their minority status. The net effect of these unique features of gay and lesbian minority status is that gay and lesbian individuals may appear on the surface to have a “better deal” than other minority groups. Most gay and lesbian individuals to some extent internalize the societal denigration of homosexual individuals.
