One major benefit that these statics could have been including different religions into the statistics and if a person had a religious background. “One final set of theories that may shed light on the influence of religion on LGBTQ well-being addresses identity development within the LGBTQ population. Identity issues play a major role in how LGBTQ individuals experience not only religion but many other issues. The most commonly cited LGBTQ developmental theory is Cass’ identity model. According to this model, LGBTQ individuals go through a six-step process of development: (1) identity confusion, (2) identity comparison, (3) identity tolerance, (4) identity acceptance, (5) identity pride, and finally (6) identity synthesis. These stages generally progress from confusion to exploration to pride and to acceptance of an LGBTQ identity.” (Goodman p. 2).

Looking at this information on the LGBTQ+ community really allowed me to see just how much the community itself faces. And that, over the years, the community has had to deal with some of the worst stereotypes held against them. It also humbled me a bit; while this sounds a little odd to say, but the pride I am able to experience is from all of these people before me that fought for the community that I am proud to be a part of. It has also shown me that even in the darkest of times, the community can rise up and beat whatever is going against us. Plus, it allowed me to really think about the diversity that I want to see not only in the LGBTQ+ community but also in the different communities that I am a part of.

When I was deciding on bias, looking at information on homophobia it really opened my eyes. While I have seen homophobia on the internet and at pride parades that I have gone to, learning more about it really opened my eyes. Plus, when I started to look into what the government has done to take away rights, I never realized that this is something that happened throughout history. Yet, I felt as though I should not have been as shocked as I was. Especially since, older episodes of some of my favorite television shows show allowed for homophobic/transphobic conversations to be used in them. But to find out that there was a senator that used homophobia against some of his employees and that he correlated sexuality to a particular political stance. I do think that this is still present but was not as obvious until these past few presidential races. For example, on TikTok a trend that has been gaining popularity, is women calling out Republican women for the makeup that they do. This trend says that they all do their makeup in a very similar fashion thus allowing people to make fun of them for this. And with this class, I think that these people would be shocked to find out that what they are doing could be a harmful bias. Now, it may not seem harmful to others, but there may be people who do not identify with the Republican party that just happen to feel comfortable with a makeup look similar to those of the ones Republican woman. And many of these people who are participating in this trend, might be some of the first people to call out Republicans for having a bias against them.

With screenwriting, I have written some characters in a way that would make them gender neutral and raceless because I want the roles to be open to everyone. Yet, don’t get me wrong, I have a screenplay for a horror movie with the main character/survivor being a mid-20s black woman. I made the character black because a lot of older and even newer movies use white people as the survivor or the main character. Now, when it came to the killer it was an older white man because I researched past serial killers and the percentages of the different races. When it came to the cops that I wrote into the storyline, I didn’t really genderize or give a race to because I want anyone to have the opportunity to play them. I think that having main characters be different race in each movie I want to write will allow people to see someone like them and someone they could look up to.