Do Social Workers Apply “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transpersons in the South?

ABSTRACT

Across the United States there has been a spate of legislative bills and initiatives that blatantly stigmatize and discriminate against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This study was a cross-sectional, exploratory survey designed to measure the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of Tennessee social workers and future social workers toward the LGBT population and toward proposed discriminatory legislation. A 3-way factorial ANOVA investigated the effects of political affiliation, religious affiliation, and social contact on the dependent measures. Significant main effects were found. Self-reported political affiliation was found to be the most important factor predicting LGBT acceptance and LGBT respect among this sample.

KEYWORDS:

• Bisexual
• discriminatory bills
• gay
• lesbian
• LGBT
• political affiliation
• religious affiliation
• social contact
• social empathy
• social workers
• transgender

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Samantha Brin, MSW on an earlier version of this article.