Biological explanations for sexuality and gender focus on the idea that genetic structures set at conception, perhaps along with environmental features during pregnancy (such as maternal hormone levels or drug use) set sexuality and gender in stone at birth. These explanations would say that if someone comes to an understanding of a different gender or sexuality later in life, he or she is either wrong or until then has been suppressing his or her "true" self.

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Psychology, on the other hand, leaves some room for events that happen after birth to effect individuals' sexual and gender identities. Psychology, particularly its psychoanalytic branch, believes that the early childhood experiences, especially those in infancy, are important in shaping the gender and sexuality that an adult will later display. Traumatic events in later life can also cause changes in gender and sexuality.

These conflicts between disciplines are not only important in terms of drawing disciplinary boundaries but also have important effects for the real everyday lives of glbtq individuals and communities. For instance, if the biologists are right, then glbtq individuals could no longer be asked by conservative political and religious figures to change who they are. On the other hand, a genetic root to homosexuality could lead to genetic testing and selective abortion of fetuses carrying this gene.

Some glbtq people worry that if the sociological explanation for homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderedness is accepted, they will be held responsible for their genders and sexualities. The idea of social construction, however, does not mean that individuals "choose" to be glbtq (though it provides for the fact that some individuals could possibly make that choice). Instead, it means that biology and early childhood experiences are not destiny, and that the structure of society leaves room for changes in an individual's sexuality and gender throughout the life course.

Anthropology, the first of the social science disciplines to take sexuality--and particularly homosexuality--seriously as a field of intellectual inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has achieved a new impetus in the post-Stonewall era.

The earliest etiologies--or theories of causation--of homosexuality date from European antiquity, but the search for a universal etiology has intensified as homosexual behavior has come under the scrutiny of science.

Over the past 25 years, the academic discipline of Geography, especially its social scientific and humanistic branch, has been attuned to glbtq people, places, and natures.

Hate Crimes are crimes towards persons or groups motivated by the victim's race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Not limited to activity in the traditionally conceived political sphere, identity politics refers to activism, politics, theorizing, and other similar activities based on the shared experiences of members of a specific social group, often relying on shared experiences of oppression.

Pederasty is the erotic relationship between an adult male and a boy, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection.

Post-modern theory has led to the problematizing of marginalized and "other" peoples and cultures and to viewing homosexuality as a social construction.

Sexual orientation indicates erotic attraction, whether toward people of the same gender (homosexual), the opposite gender (heterosexual), or both (bisexual).

Women's studies, an interdisciplinary academic field that was inaugurated at major universities around 1970, is now offered at every conceivable type of academic institution throughout the world.

French writer and public intellectual Jean-Paul Aron is widely credited for giving a human face to AIDS and thereby changing the public perception of the disease and those who suffered from it.

One of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century, Foucault has had an enormous influence on our understanding of the lesbian and gay literary heritage and the cultural forces surrounding it.

The founder of psychoanalysis and the discoverer of the unconscious, Sigmund Freud initiated a fundamental transformation in the self-understanding of Western men and women, including especially the role of sexuality.

A founder of the Sociologists' Gay Caucus and a pioneer researcher in the study of homosexual behavior, Laud Humphreys combined academic study with political activism of all kinds.

The most important sex researcher of the twentieth century, Alfred C. Kinsey contributed groundbreaking studies of male and female sexual behavior in America.

Edward Sagarin, writing as Donald Webster Cory, produced important books that prepared the stage for the gay liberation movement, but under his own name he later attacked the very movement he inspired.