Social Policy and the LGBTQ Community

Catalog description

The course will explore and analyze the development of social policy within the context of LGBTQ social movements both assimilationist and liberationist. Among the policies examined are HIV/AIDS, Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Same-Sex Marriage, Adoption of Children, the DSM and Pathologizing the LGBT Community, Legal Issues, Non-Discrimination, and Hate Law Legislation. Social Services for the LGBTQ community will be discussed as well as support for LGBTQ youth. The particular difficulties confronting transpeople and their acceptance will be examined in the context of the social construction of gender; in this, the work of philosophers Judith Butler and Michel Foucault will be introduced. Questions of social justice will be threaded throughout the course, as will social work advocacy and coalition building.