- Discrimination: acting differently towards someone based on prejudice.
- Prejudice: stereotyping a person based on characteristics of a group to which the person belongs without regard to how the person may vary from group characteristics.
B. About one in four students from elementary school through high school are victims of bullying and harassment while on school property because of their race, ethnicity, gender, disability, religion or sexual orientation (BullyingStatistics.org). Unfortunately, the main cause of bullying is usually due to something that may set the bullied individual apart from the "norm ", and one of those main causes is sexual orientation.
C. Harassment (both physical and mental) and prejudice that individuals face because of their sexual orientation can have a real and devastating impact, such as anxiety, depression and even suicide. But this problem could be alleviated if we simply solve the interpersonal communication defect that is prejudice itself.
2. BODY I: CAUSES.
I. Discrimination as a learned behavior.
A. Discrimination and prejudice are both learned behaviors. No one is born hating other people because of their sexual orientation, it is a behavior that is picked up from observations children make as they are developing. As children are growing, their mental development is very impressionable, especially from the age of 7 to 11, as this is when most children have acquired the basic skills of interaction and are starting to form judgments and perceptions (Essentials of Psychology). Children will look to their parents and other adults that hold persuasive power for what they should think and believe at this stage. What the parents/ influential adults believe is then perpetuated by the child, and ideas that may now be considered outdated, such as discrimination based on sexual orientation, continue to cause problems and hate for the LGBTQIA+ community (LGBTQIA+ stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer Intersex Asexual and the + is inclusive for anyone else who is not heterosexual or cisgendered (someone who identifies with the gender they were born with) and also includes allies of the community).