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LGBTQ+ individuals are increasingly turning to chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs) to meet their mental health needs. However, little research has explored whether these chatbots can adequately and safely provide tailored support for this demographic. We interviewed 18 LGBTQ+ and 13 non-LGBTQ+ participants about their experiences with LLM-based chatbots for mental health needs. LGBTQ+ participants relied on these chatbots for mental health support, likely due to an absence of support in real life. Notably, while LLMs offer prompt support, they frequently fall short in grasping the nuances of LGBTQ-specific challenges. Although fine-tuning LLMs to address LGBTQ+ needs can be a step in the right direction, it isn’t the panacea. The deeper issue is entrenched in societal discrimination. Consequently, we call on future researchers and designers to look beyond mere technical refinements and advocate for holistic strategies that confront and counteract the societal biases burdening the LGBTQ+ community. 

As dating websites are becoming an essential part of how people meet intimate and romantic partners, it is vital to design these systems to be resistant to, or at least do not amplify, bias and discrimination. Instead, the results of our online experiment with a simulated dating website, demonstrate that popular dating website design choices, such as the user of the swipe interface (swiping in one direction to indicate a like and in the other direction to express a dislike) and match scores, resulted in people racially biases choices even when they explicitly claimed not to have considered race in their decision-making. This bias was significantly reduced when the order of information presentation was reversed such that people first saw substantive profile information related to their explicitly-stated preferences before seeing the profile name and photo. These results indicate that currently-popular design choices amplify people's implicit biases in their choices of potential romantic partners, but the effects of the implicit biases can be reduced by carefully redesign the dating website interfaces.