Homophobia has created barriers to the safety and security of LGBT educational leaders. Legalized discrimination, found in the history and current practice of informal actions/attitudes of society, and the formal policies/laws create a context for the lived experiences of LGBT educational leaders. Within the context of formal policies/laws and informal actions/attitudes of society, the purpose of this study is to come to understand the commonalities of the personal and professional lived experiences of LG[BT]1 educational leaders. The following research questions guided this study are: (1) How have LG[BT]¹ educational leaders' past lived experiences as students and teachers impacted or informed their personal and professional lives?; (2) How have the current lived experiences (related to sexual identity) of LG[BT] educational leaders impacted or informed their personal and professional lives?; (3) What perceptions/experiences do LG[BT] educational leaders report regarding the contextual formal policies/laws and contextual informal actions/attitudes that may or may not have shaped their personal and professional lives?; and (4) Given their cumulative experiences (related to sexual identity), what recommendations do LG[BT] educational leaders have regarding improved support for LG[BT] students, teachers, and administrators in public school settings? The research design used two structures of data gathering: (1) High-structure – Experiential Simulations^© (Brunner, 2000), a web-based, virtual-environment technology to insure confidentiality and anonymity, and (2) Low-structure – individual interviews whereby participants chose to reveal their identities to the researcher. Data analysis revealed fear as the overarching theme interwoven throughout the data. From the overarching theme of fear, two major themes, five minor themes, and twenty-one supporting cluster themes were identified. Further analysis of the major, minor, and supporting cluster themes resulted in the Cycles of Fear Model: Losses and Gains.

¹When brackets are used (in discussion of this specific study), they indicate that bisexual and transgender educational leaders were invited to participate in this study, however, none of the volunteer participants identified as such.