Television is a mirror of society and in which we hope to see our lives and existence reflected. When the images shown marginalises your reflection through the use of stereotypes and common tropes it is hard to believe this does not affect the world around you and your perception about yourself. Television is vastly researched and this case study will add to it by analysing how lesbian and bisexual relationships are stereotyped through the use of tropes on Western television shows. Semiotics is used to decipher the underlying meanings of stereotypes and tropes; as stereotypes and tropes marginalise groups of people. By using visual analysis to watch episodes, the scenes analysed through qualitative content analysis proved that same-sex relationships are stereotyped through tropes and rarely challenge previous research. Social interaction based on representation theory solidify the perceptions through television images causing further harm to lesbians and bisexuals.

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Deviants of Great Potential analyzes the 1924 Leopold-Loeb case as a cultural narrative with important effects on the marginalization of same-sex sexuality in men throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. After Chicago teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were arrested for the United States' first nationally recognized "thrill killing," the apparently motiveless murder of fourteen-year-old Robert Franks, the Leopold-Loeb case became an instant cause celebre. The popular fixation on the case continued in the decades after 1924, as journalists and behavioral scientists treated it as a precedent for understanding a certain type of crime and criminal. Meanwhile---especially after World War II---a slew of novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers offered their own interpretations.;Through the intertwining representations of the case in fiction and nonfiction, the Leopold-Loeb case became a cautionary tale about the dangers of "abnormal" sexuality in men. Narratives of the case portrayed Leopold and Loeb's sexual relationship as the sine qua non of Robert Franks's murder, and the case thereby came to represent same-sex sexuality as a threat to moral order and public safety, and to serve as a counterexample of the traits "normal" men should or should not exhibit.

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The purpose of this study was to gain insight into foster parents’ perceptions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) foster youth through a self-administered survey in an attempt to provide better care for these children. The pool of participants were varied in most areas including age, gender, ethnicity, education levels, and religiosity. However, the majority was heterosexual and had less than 2 years of experience fostering. The results showed no particular demographics, trainings, or level of experience that contribute to more or less acceptance or preparedness. This may be due to response bias, however, it is more likely due to a flawed instrument. The results show that overall attitudes followed a normal bell curve, slightly skewed in favor of more positive attitudes. This is the most important finding of the study, which shows an improvement in foster parents’ overall attitudes compared to prior research. It also showed that more parents feel comfortable fostering LGBT youth, than do not.

AMBIENT LIGHT: ESSAYS ON MARRIAGE, MOTHERHOOD, AND MENTAL HEALTH is a collection of ten personal and lyric essays interspersed with poems that speak to the subject or tone of the essay that follows. These essays examine the narrator’s experiences as mother, wife, and daughter, and explore the manner in which the different roles bleed into one another. The narrator’s impending divorce and the events that coalesce around it shape these essays into a coherent whole. In the spirit of Brenda Miller’s lyric essays, the essays collected in AMBIENT LIGHT: ESSAYS ON MARRIAGE, MOTHERHOOD, AND MENTAL HEALTH, use rich, imagistic language to tell of places and times both reflective and speculative in nature. They speak to the all-too-common dilemma of balancing motherhood with a demanding professional life, while also considering less ordinary issues, such as one child’s mental health challenges and another’s run-ins with the law.

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Many researchers and academics argue that there is a significant disparity in the rates of attempted and successful suicide between the GLBT and the heterosexual community. Anecdotal evidence has also suggested this for well over a century. There appears to be several unique phenomena that intersect to place this minority at greater risk of suicidality. Heteronormativity, heterosexism, homophobia, rejection, bullying, violence, isolation, negative self-image and discrimination have all been implicated as significant contributing factors in increased suicidality within GLBT youth. It is the intersection of these issues as they relate to the GLBT youth that this thesis seeks to investigate with the view to inform progressive and sensitive social work practice in the future. / Honours thesis