Today, LGBT individuals are victimized and very little has been done to resolve this issue in Guatemala, and Latin America for that matter. Guatemalans who identify as queer are consistently ostracized for struggling to conform to a heteronormative society that Guatemala has instituted. Sexual minorities are denied essential services such as education and healthcare, and the Guatemalan State has done very little to provide aid to LGBT individuals, insinuating that Guatemala is an anti-LGBT country. The State is portrayed as not providing enough aid to protect the well-being of the LGBT community from discriminatory rhetoric and violence. Guatemala's attitudes towards the LGBT community The LGBT community in Guatemala is persecuted for the sexual orientations or gender identities that are disparate from the heteronormative society of Guatemala, and sexual minorities are generally not accepted by friends or family. Most of Latin America chooses to ostracize sexual minorities because of its strong roots to Catholicism. The Catholic Church has portrayed its distaste with the LGBT community, patently against pro-LGBT legislation; religious attendance and animosity toward LGBT rights is highly correlated. There are unequivocal threats towards LGBT individuals, especially transgender women. Transgender individuals are spurned from society and their families. In fact, the State refuses to acknowledge the identities of many transgender people under Article 1 of the Civil Code of Guatemala. Article 1 allows the State to adamantly deny providing transgender individuals with documents that allow them to legally identify with the gender they identify with. Misconceptions about LGBT individuals The State not only rejects the concept of transgender individuals as being legitimate, but the country also presumes and assigns the sex roles of men who have sex with men. These presumptions are made on stereotypes that have been manufactured by the heteronormative society and the patriarchal structures that have been instituted in Mesoamerica. Stephen Murray studied homosexual occupations in Mesoamerica by analyzing a man's employer. The study focused on whether a man's occupation, along with a man's personality, can accurately determine a man's sexual preference – a pasivo (bottom) or activo (top). Murray found that a hairdresser and ballet dancer in his sample did not portray stereotypical traits of being feminine or narcissistic. These misconceptions of men who have sex with men are made because the society of Mesoamerica presume that men who work in “feminine” occupations are notably feminine or vain. Furthermore, it is also presumed that because they are