This article details the present kn...

This article details the present knowledge regarding the provision of culturally appropriate career services to gay and lesbian clients. It is divided into 5 parts: history and connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts for the delivery of career counseling services to gay and lesbian clients, counselor self-preparation for working with gay and lesbian clients, client-focused interventions useful for counseling with gay and lesbian clients, program-focused interventions useful for addressing the special issues that this clump presents, and appropriate advocacy or social action interventions. Issues of multiple cultural identities and the intersection of lesbian and gay issues with race and ethnicity are also addressed.

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Providing effective and culturally appropriate career counseling to gay and lesbian clients may appear, at first glance, to be largely the same as helping nongay or nonlesbian clients identify and keep up their career goals. Even in the literature in succession career counseling with lesbian and gay characters published prior to 1990, not many articles identified any special interventions that were different from the career counseling practice with majority cultivation individuals. Since 1990, however, a substantial dead body of literature has been published that addresses career counseling with lesbian and gay bodys (Pope, 1995c), but very little of the past or newly come career counseling literature regarding gay men and lesbian women has addressed the issues of nondominant racial or ethnic clusters (Chung & Katayama, 1998; pontiff & Chung, 2000). Furthermore, as there has not been a concomitant increase in articles published onward the career development of nation who identify as bisexual, transgender, intersex, or questioning, this article focuses exclusively onward the provision of career counseling services to gay and lesbian clients.

The view of this article is to detail the common knowledge regarding the provision of culturally appropriate career services to gay and lesbian clients. It is divided into five parts: history and words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following counselor self-preparation for working with gay and lesbian clients, client-focused interventions useful for counseling with gay and lesbian clients, program-focused interventions useful for addressing the special issues that this cluster presents, and appropriate advocacy or social action interventions. Issues of multiple cultural identities and the intersection of lesbian and gay issues with race and ethnicity are also addressed.

History and Context

In the past several years, the emerging see the verb of an identifiable lesbian and gay civilization in most medium-to-large metropolitan areas in the United States has dispelled the long-held negative stereotype of gay men as effeminate and lesbian women as overly masculine (Barret & Logan, 2001; pontiff 1995c; Pope & Barret, 2002) Prior to that, if gay men and lesbian women did not live in large cities so as New York, San Francisco, and Boston, where vital lesbian and gay agriculture thrives, gay men and lesbian women generally kept their sexual orientation a closely guarded concealed on the job. Many of them fabricated social lives that included dates with ones of the opposite sex, and they rarely shared their vacation photographs with their coworkers. If there was a social incident with coworkers, many would bring opposite sex dates that had been secur to help mask their secret. Some even chose careers upon the basis of their safety in the adventure they decided to come abroad For example, it was not unusual to hear young gay men or lesbian women speak of avoiding careers that involved working with children or illustration on conservative corporations that would not deal with their sexual orientation easily. Others carefully guarded their sexual orientation for fear that the promotions would be denied them if they were more "out" Fortunately today, for many lesbian and gay clients, long of this is changing, and it is not unusual to hear casual conversations about the social and relationship aspects of gay and lesbian coworkers in the workplace. That, too, recommends that the special career destitutions of gay men and lesbian women are rapidly changing.

In spite of this increased visibility and acceptance--and just as African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans continue to experience work at jobs discrimination (Bowman, 1993)--gay men and lesbian women continue to experience difficulty in the workplace (Adams, 1997; Anastas, 1998; Diamant, 1993; Kirby, 2002) The failure to pass laws as it was as the Employment Nondiscrimination Act by the agency of the U.S. Congress attests to the lack of acceptance of the straits of gay men and lesbian women in the workplace. However, major changes are nevertheless occurring in the workplace, and gay and lesbian professionals appear to have penetrateed a new rather contradictory era in which their sexual orientation may or may not be an issue there (Adams, 1997; Anastas, 1998; Diamant, 1993; Ellis & Riggle, 1996; Kirby, 2002; side sheltered from the wind & Brown, 1993; Schneider, 1987) Many national corporations are now, for example, including sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination personnel policies, and many are providing domestic partner benefits (Human Rights Campaign, 2003) Noteworthy is that in 1995 there were single 90 state and local managements that provided domestic partner benefits to their gay and lesbian employee (Pope 1995c) whereas in 2003 there were 172 state and local conducts that provided these benefits (Human Rights Campaign, 2003) with 2326 different employer including sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies and 5815 offering domestic partner benefits.