How is sexuality relevant to anything application related?
I've been asked a related question a few times when I was an LGBT health speaker.
LGBT people are not welcomed by physicians and many of us die due to lack of medical care because physicians don't treat us. The lack of family and other issues also end up causing some of us to engage in less than healthy behaviours such as increased smoking and such. Some of us have seen this happen in our communities and would like to fix the huge health care disparity. The LGBT community is incredibly underserved and let's not even talk about the intersexed community. I once had a patient in the ER, an older gay black guy (a bearish type) who flat out stated he was scared because he got more crap for being gay than for being black. Think about that. He wanted me to do one of the tests on him which I was not qualified to perform, but I pulled in one of my friends (straight black guy who was very LGBT friendly) to do the test while I stood there and held the guy's hand as he did not want to be the only LGBT person there just in case.
I am a gay identified female to male transsexual and I have different needs than the "average" male as well as the "average" female. By looking at me, you would not know that I need to get Pap Smears every so often (which reminds me to make an appointment so thanks). I had one nurse who was so uncomfortable with me that she kept saying "down there" which as I had just had a pretty major foot problem, it took a while to realize she meant a little further north.
All sorts of metrics have to be considered on a one on one basis over if the goal is to be in the male side or female side. For example, my ideal weight is somewhat higher than women, but not as high as men. Some of my lab results do the same.
Would you know what to do if my hairy, bearded self came in pregnant? Would you continue to be respectful or would you default to calling me "she" and allow your staff members to treat me as a freak? Come to think of it, would you even think to test me for pregnancy if I came in complaining of vommitting? Or would you assume I was a cisgender male with a wife once you found out I was married? They sure as heck didn't know what to do when I was pregnant and this was before the Thomas Beattie pregnant man thing. He was not the first and will not be the last. I was treated like a freak and was denied medical care. I gave birth in a trailer in a trailer park. This would not have happened if that doctor had a more LGBT welcoming practice or heck even knew LGBT people.
Homophobia is incredibly common and transphobia even more so yet there are LGBT people that need help. Many states you can be fired for being gay, even more so for being transgender. Laws are continuously changing the landscape making it more difficult for us to find jobs, get house, get medical care, etc. My partner had to move out of state in order to get a job because people found out about me. My friend Traci died of cancer because of hatred against the LGBT community. My friend Michelle nearly died. Every day (or so it seems) I hear a new story of someone nearly dying from some form of anti LGBT malarkey.
The LGBT community also has it's own culture which honestly if you are not a part of you might not understand it much less how to communicate with us. It comes from being a stigmatized part of society where we are treated as second class citizens and do not have full rights in almost any matter. Some things are still very quiet and hard to talk about outside the community especially if you don't know if that person is going to be ok to talk to or not. In fact in some countries, we literally have a separate language than everyone else... Polari for instance which is undergoing a revival.
I do agree with all three of my colleagues above.
