Sexual Orientation

Sexual Orientation and Career Counseling

Only 30 years ago there was little research addressing career counseling with lesbian and gay clients other than literature addressing such clients generally as “deviants.” That is now changing, and for career counseling professionals seeking practical advice on how to provide such counseling services, there is now a growing body of literature.

First, counselors who have lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients must become aware of the client's culture in order to be knowledgeable facilitators of growth and development—aware of the sociopolitical issues, specific knowledge, necessary information, and institutional barriers that confront gay and lesbian clients who seek career counseling, and also aware of the history, language, rituals, traditions, and sense of community that define the gay and lesbian culture. Finally, counselors must take a personal inventory of the ways that their often subtle or unconscious biases may influence the career counseling process.

Discrimination issues permeate all approaches to career counseling with sexual minorities because such discrimination colors the social and personal lives of all sexual, racial, and ethnic minorities. The special needs of this cultural minority arise from the historic discrimination that has helped define the gay and lesbian community and includes lack of civil rights; secret or semisecret lives; oppression, rejection, or ostracism by family of origin; societal censure; lowered self-esteem due to internalized homophobia; fear and reality of physical violence; and campaigns of hatred and vilification by right-wing political groups and fundamentalist religious groups.

Career counseling with gay or lesbian individuals requires cultural counseling competence. Three seminal documents inform such competence: the Multicultural Counseling Competencies (American Counseling Association and Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development); the Association for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues in Counseling Competencies for Counseling Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Clients; and the American Psychological Association's Guidelines for Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Clients.

Living in communities that routinely discriminate against gay men and lesbian women makes it virtually impossible for counselors to avoid internalizing negative stereotypes or attitudes about this sexual minority culture. Such misunderstanding will quickly be evident to sexual minority clients and may cause them to seek help elsewhere or not to get help at all. Counselors, however, must be familiar with gay and lesbian culture so that they are credible and congruent in their attitudes. Attending workshops, reading the literature, participating in lesbian and gay culture, and talking with former lesbian or gay clients or friends are effective ways to acquire knowledge about gay men and lesbian women and their culture.

Counselors need explicit awareness of their own religious and spiritual nature and beliefs. Counselors never impose their own belief system on their clients, but many lesbian and gay clients have been hurt by religious organizations.

Finally, counselors must confront their own individual prejudice and bias toward lesbian and gay clients and culture. The ethics codes of all the major mental health professional associations offer guidance for individuals who work with clients around issues related to their sexual orientation.

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