Counselor Quick Reference

Key terms, models, and clinical checkpoints from Hays & Erford, Ch. 6 (Sexual Orientation and Heterosexism) — pulled from the full combined study guide for fast review before class or clinical work.

Ch. 6, Sexual Orientation & Heterosexism

Sexual Orientation and Heterosexism

Learning Outcomes 6.1–6.5

Glossary

Sexual identity: APA (2011) breaks this into four layers: biological/physical sex, internal gender identity, the social-role expectations tied to gender, and who someone is drawn to (sexual orientation identity).
Sexual orientation: Not a single switch — described across roughly seven angles: what someone does, feels, fantasizes about, is attracted to, prefers socially, how they live day to day, and how they self-identify.
Gay / lesbian: Current, non-stigmatizing self-identifiers; "homosexuality" has fallen out of use because of its clinical, pathologizing history.
Queer (Q): A reclaimed catch-all for anyone outside heterosexual norms — widely embraced, especially by younger generations, as shorthand for the whole community.
Pansexual: Attraction that isn't keyed to a partner's gender identity or biological sex at all.
Heteroflexible: Identifies as mostly heterosexual but has had occasional, situational same-sex experiences without claiming a bisexual identity.
Asexual: Little to no sexual attraction to others — which doesn't rule out romantic attraction or relationships.
Affectional orientation: An alternate framing (Lambert, 2005, as cited in the textbook) that widens the lens past sexual attraction to the fuller emotional/relational picture.
Heterosexism: Systemic disadvantage built into everyday prejudice and discriminatory practice against LGBTQ+ people (Jun, 2018).
Internalized heterosexism: Taking in anti-LGBTQ+ messaging as true about oneself — often surfaces as quiet, unnamed shame rather than obvious distress.
Homonegativity: A more accurate replacement for "homophobia" (Berg et al., 2016) — this isn't only fear, it's active devaluation.
Heterosexual privilege: The stack of things heterosexual people get without asking — legal marriage, casual public affection, seeing themselves reflected in media, assumed safety.
Minority stress: The added burden of chronic strain that comes specifically from holding a stigmatized social position (Meyer, 2015) — see model below.

Key models

Minority Stress — 3 sources (Meyer)

flowchart TD
    A[Minority Stress] --> B[Discrimination events, one-time or ongoing]
    A --> C[The exhausting work of staying braced for the next one]
    A --> D[Taking in society's prejudice as self-belief]
    D --> E[Which wears down self-esteem]

Morales (1989) — dual-identity stages

Not yet acknowledging the conflict exists
Claiming a bisexual label instead of gay/lesbian
Caught between loyalty to LGBTQ+ community and ethnic/racial community
Deciding which allegiance comes first
Holding both identities together as one integrated whole

SOCE — 2 paradigms (both discredited)

Secular — aversive conditioning, desensitization techniques, pressure toward stereotyped gender behavior
Religious — ex-gay ministry models built on prayer and repentance

ACA Code of Ethics (2014) — quick lookup

Standard	Content
C.5	No discrimination based on sexual orientation/gender identity
C.2.a	Practice competently
A.4.b	Refrain from imposing own values on clients
A.11.a	Referral/termination only when lacking competence
A.11.b	Must not refer based on counselor's personal values/beliefs

LGB affirmative counseling checklist

Take honest stock of where you're strong and where you're not yet equipped with LGBTQ+ clients
Help clients unlearn the negative messages they've internalized about themselves
Treat identity as something to affirm, never as pathology — same-sex attraction and affection aren't symptoms
Widen your working definition of "family" past the biological/nuclear default
Screen for discrimination, harassment, and violence, then put the ACA's advocacy competencies into practice
Let clients set the terms for how they're addressed — "homosexual" carries clinical baggage best avoided

Discourse · Positioning · Deconstruction (Drewery, 2005) — three lenses worth having ready: discourse asks who gets airtime in a conversation and who doesn't; positioning is the stance you find yourself taking within it; deconstruction is the work of taking apart the dominant story that's blocking someone's equal footing.

Every stat here has caveats. This sheet is for fast recall of terms and models — it deliberately drops fact-check nuance. For exam-safe citations, verify against the textbook or a primary source before quoting a number.