User talk:Torrey T/Sexual orientation discrimination

There has been a long history of sexual orientation discrimination in many areas of society. Work place discrimination has become a major spot for discrimination based on sexual orientation. Places of work have denied people jobs strictly based on their sexuality, this could also happen at certain schools or universities. Sexual orientation has no influence on a person's ability to perform a certain job, yet employers consider it a disadvantage. It was reported that a little more than one third of LGBT+ people told their coworkers what their sexual orientation was (Sears, 2011). Which was justified by either wanting personal privacy in the workplace or in fear of getting fired. It was reported in a survey that individuals who were out about their sexuality to their coworkers experienced more harassment, with 16 percent of those people losing their jobs (Sears, 2011). The fear of harassment is sufficient enough to prevent individuals to come out to their coworkers (Ryan & Wessel, 2012). Harassment in the workplace can be damaging to a person’s well-being and quality of work. Sexual orientation harassment is defined as treating someone poorly or acting in a negative way towards them due to their sexual orientation. Harassment does not have to be specifically directed towards one individual. For example, gay jokes/slurs could be said without the person knowing a member in the workplace is a part of the LGBT+ community (Ryan & Wessel, 2012). This type of harassment will typically go on without another coworker intervening because it is harder for people to perceive it as sexual orientation harassment. A study found that people are less likely to directly intervene after an incident of sexual orientation harassment (Ryan & Wessel, 2012). Less than 20% of the observers in the situation immediately intervened to stop the harassment (Ryan & Wessel, 2012). This shows how vulnerable members of the LGBT+ community are to workplace harassment. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act was first proposed in 1970, 1994, 1995, 1996 to help stop or reduce employee discrimination but was rejected each time (Berg & Lien, 2002). There have since been laws that protect members of the LGBT+ community from discrimination. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states that discrimination against sexual orientation falls under the protection against discrimination against a person’s sex (EEOC, 2020). However, sexual orientation discrimination has been determined to affect an individual’s income. Specifically targeting gay men. It was found that homosexual men make less money compared to heterosexual men. The income difference found showed homosexual males made 7 percent less than heterosexual males (Elmslie & Tebaldi, 2007). Majority of the discrimination was found to take place in more male-dominated industries like construction, production, and maintenance (Elmslie & Tebaldi, 2007). These types of jobs that show higher levels of discrimination don’t require a lot of interactions with customers. Whereas, gay men were reportedly more likely to hold positions in jobs that requires them to interact with customers (Elmslie & Tebaldi, 2007).