Chapter 5 explores the common stereotype that LGBTQ+ people flaunt their sexuality, or behave sexually inappropriate in ways that heterosexual and cisgender people do not. This stereotype undergirds the rationale for recent anti-LGBTQ+ bills such as Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill and anti-transgender legislation which is part of the backlash against the progress of queer rights in the early 2000s. Various shortcuts in thinking that contribute to the reckless and false belief that queer people flaunt their sexuality are discussed. Lesbian and gay parenting and children of queer parents is discussed as well. Heterosexual privilege is examined. The empirical work on child sexual abuse is also considered. The chapter concludes with strategies to reduce heterosexism and homophobia.

Marriage equality was a significant achievement, one that yielded both practical and symbolic benefits for hundreds of thousands of queer households. At the same time, marriage equality is not the same as full equality. In the years since the Obergefell decision, LGBTQ rights advocates have continued to fight difficult and demoralizing battles against harmful laws and policies, which have increasingly targeted transgender rights. However, the movement’s past successes should offer hope for the future. The history of gay and lesbian rights advocacy reveals that small victories at the state and local level, brought about by working with nonlegal actors, can transform both the law and society. Although advocates have not yet achieved gay liberation’s visions of the future, they have attained meaningful reforms. The movement’s history thus offers a crucial reminder that the law can change society for the better.

Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, same-sex couples had become visible as partners and parents, as well as integral members of straight families. This chapter demonstrates how these previous victories on behalf of the queer family made marriage equality possible. When the movement for marriage equality began, advocates emphasized that allowing same-sex couples to marry was a matter of ensuring justice and equality. However, that argument failed to persuade decisionmakers, who instituted same-sex marriage bans around the country. Advocates were only able to gain legal ground when they began emphasizing how discrimination harmed longstanding, devoted same-sex couples, the children they raised, and the straight parents who loved them. They were able to stake these claims because gay- and lesbian-headed households already existed, thanks to years of family-centered strategies. Although marriage equality is the queer rights movement’s best-known success, it came as a postscript to decades of family-centered strategies.

This chapter describes psychological science’s contributions to the global rights agenda on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). First, we trace the historical stance taken in psychology on same-sex sexualities and on gender diversity, and how this positioning shaped how psychologists addressed (or did not address) SOGI concerns. Second, we examine how global rights entities such as the United Nations have engaged SOGI concerns. Third, we review four continuing challenges for SOGI-related human rights: (1) the persistent problem of LGBT pathologisation (including its manifestation in the form of so-called conversion therapy, or sexual orientation change efforts), (2) the increasing gap in the enjoyment of equal human rights for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other gender and sexual minority) individuals among people in different parts of the world, (3) the mobilization of human rights language against LGBT equality and diversity of gender identities and expressions, and (4) previously unrecognized concerns related to LGBT migrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees. Finally, we analyze how psychology as an academic discipline, as a profession, and as an organized network of professional associations has contributed to and could help in furthering the protection and promotion of rights across the spectrum of human sexual and gender diversity.