Coming Out is a Lifelong Experience: Telling Others is the End of one Process and the Beginning of Another Prior to coming out, most LGBT individuals mistakenly believe that coming out is an event and not a process. It is often viewed as an ending rather than a beginning. Coming out is an endpoint … [Read more...] about Coming Out is a Lifelong Experience: Telling Others is the End of one Process and the Beginning of Another

Many LGBTQI  people choose to go into therapy in order to find ways to deal with personal issues and improve their relationships. Regardless of why you're starting therapy, as a consumer, it's important to know that in spite of ethical guidelines, many counselors do not provide affirmative … [Read more...] about Affirmative Psychotherapy

Several years ago, the Los Angeles Times printed an ad from an ex-gay ministry, as have other cities. The ad contained a lot of misinformation, including that homosexuality is caused by absent fathers and by sexual abuse. Any rational person realizes that if fathers who worked a lot (and were … [Read more...] about Curing Reparative Therapy

As children, we were conditioned to act like a “boy” or a “girl.” Some messages were explicit, as when parents admonish their sons not to cry or tell their daughters to stop climbing trees. Other messages are less obvious: Our parents showed us how to be masculine or feminine. This kind of role … [Read more...] about How Gender Roles Impact Same-sex Relationships

When someone asked gay writer Ethan Mordden how he could live without a family, he responded that his friends were his family. But the person who questioned him didn't understand his answer: "He said, 'no – I mean a family like playing with them and learning from each other and living with them … [Read more...] about The Importance of Friendships in the LGBT Community

Brianna and Ava want to have children. However, Ava has some reservations because she’s unsure about how their children will be treated by others, and she wonders how her relationship with Brianna will impact their children in the long-term. The answers aren’t 100%, but two researchers – Judith … [Read more...] about Children of Same-sex Parents: Does Being LGBT Make a Difference?

Is it hard for you to quit worrying about money, even if you’re in good financial shape? Could a lack of money be related to a lack of self-worth, including internalized homophobia? These questions may be difficult to answer, but it’s worth a try. People with money problems tend to fall in two … [Read more...] about Financial Well-being and Being LGBT: Is there a Connection?

Imagine, for a moment, that you're walking down the street, and you see someone coming toward you. You smile at the person walking in your direction, and instead of smiling back, imagine the person looking right past you, as if you weren’t even there. It’s happened to all of us at one time or … [Read more...] about Reestablishing our Elders to their Rightful Place in Society

Prior to discussing internalized homophobia, I'd like to note that social and political forces in our culture play a large part in influencing our attitudes, beliefs, and behavior toward lesbians and gay men. Coming out often has genuine risk, whether it's being endangered physically, fired from … [Read more...] about We are all Homophobic: The Question is, How much?