UK: Scotland Gays And Lesbians “ Face Violence”

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This article is about the lesbians, gays and bisexuals faced with violence and intimidation in Edinburgh. The community safety unit of Edinburgh City Council studied that they were in the situation of fear due to abuse by the community. Research shows that 81% of them response verbal abuse and more than half to physical abuse, last year was 35.9% .Bisexual had gone through higher level of rape where as lesbian gone through higher incidence of attempted rape, but lower incidence of rape. However, only 12.5% of them who are engaged in sexual abuse reported to police about such incident. 133 gay men, 105 lesbians, 27 bisexual men, 18 bisexual women and 18 transgender people were interviewed.

Functionalism can be applied in this article. Functionalists stress human behavior can be controlled through social relations, or social structures. They believe that gay and lesbian exists probably due to social outcast. They are isolated for being part of the society members. Besides from being isolated or social outcast by the group member, they can be born to be as gay/lesbian/bisexual. This is termed as symbolic interaction. Interactionists believe that people's feelings and behavior as individuals can influence the way society develop. Therefore, the existence of gay/lesbian/bisexual. They criticized on Durkheim's theory on how he over emphasized social solidarity on the kind of moral cement which binds people together. With the existence of violent towards homosexual or bisexual, it develops social inequality which lead to conflict theory. It develops class of people into high and low standing.

In my opinion, social outcast can lead to suicide. Because they are being abused by certain people, they have negative thoughts towards themselves and think that they are useless to stay in the society. Homosexual and bisexual are not a sin in a society. Therefore, the institutions have to find solutions in order to protect the victims.