Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo has been a professor of Psychology at Stanford University since 1968 and is one of this nation's most famous psychological researchers. In 1970, his Stanford Prison Experiment dramatically illustrated the capacity of ordinary individuals to develop abusive and even sadistic impulses in a classic experiment that has been widely taught to undergraduate Psychology students for nearly four decades. More recently, Dr. Zimbardo was enlisted by the U.S. government in connection with understanding the abuses that transpired at the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison facility.

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Even in contemporary U.S. society, a homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender identity is not well received and exposes the individual to intense social ostracism (Herek, 1998 p21-22). Even worse, outright violence against homosexuals is extremely common, partly because homophobia is largely condoned and even encouraged in many ways, notwithstanding public proclamations of the importance of social tolerance (Herek, 1998...
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