Sexual Orientation

Detects sexual-orientation information in person-linked workforce, patient, survey, member, relationship, intake, and case records. The detector recognises the explicit sexual orientation phrase, orientation-specific identification statements, coming-out statements, and same-sex partner or spouse references, then raises confidence only for person records and populated attributions. It deliberately excludes transgender status, gender identity, and pronouns because those are distinct attributes. Sexual orientation is protected under GDPR Article 9 and Australian anti-discrimination and privacy law. Topic-grade detector, low confidence by design.

Type: regex
Engine: universal
Confidence: low
Confidence justification: Low by design: the attribute has no fixed format. Enforce tiers now require the attribute to be tied to an identified person record (a populated name/DOB/ID field), and 85 also requires a separately populated orientation value plus independent record evidence, so policy text, surveys-in-design and news naming the category stay at 65 discovery.
Jurisdictions: global, au, eu
Regulations: GDPR, Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth)
Frameworks: ISO 27001, NIST CSF, SOC 2
Data categories: pii
Scope: broad
Risk rating: 7
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)\b(?:sexual\s+orientations?|identif(?:y|ies|ied)\s+as\s+(?:gay|lesbian|bisexual|queer)|same-sex\s+(?:partner|spouse)|coming\s+out\s+as\s+(?:gay|lesbian|bisexual|queer))\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

sexual orientation, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, partner, spouse, demographic response

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

HR diversity survey - individual response Employee ID: E40917 Name: Avery Teston Sexual orientation: Bisexual Response selected voluntarily; recorded as confidential. — Person record with a populated orientation value and survey-response evidence (85)
Patient intake record Patient name: Casey Rourke Notes: same-sex partner listed as support person. — Person record with a same-sex partner reference only (75)
Hospital admission record Patient name: Jordan Fairweather Patient ID: P-3390218 Next of kin: Sam Fairweather (same-sex spouse) Sexual orientation: Gay Disclosed to admitting nurse with consent for care planning. — Admission record with patient identifiers, same-sex spouse next of kin and a populated orientation value (85)

Should not match

The new employee orientation begins Monday morning. — Near-miss ("orientation" alone), no sexual-orientation disclosure
The building's orientation faces north for solar efficiency. — Unrelated "orientation" (architectural), no disclosure vocabulary
The team celebrated Pride month with a company-wide event. — Topical mention ("Pride"), no personal disclosure phrase
Public policy document reports aggregate LGBTQ community demographics. — Public aggregate material is not a person-linked orientation disclosure
Sample template: patient intake record with optional demographic response Example Value. — Adjacent template language is not a populated orientation record
Patient intake record lists preferred pronouns as they and them. — Sibling gender-expression data is excluded from the orientation-only Purview primary
Employee profile records transgender status and gender identity. — Gender identity is a distinct attribute and must not satisfy this classifier
The organisation published its LGBTQ+ inclusion policy for Pride month. — Community and policy terminology without a person-linked orientation
Policy guidance: this procedure explains how sexual orientation details are collected, stored and shared, who may access them and how long they are kept. Staff should read the privacy section before completing any form. It contains no details about any individual. — Policy/guidance text naming the topic without any populated record (65 discovery at most)
Optional demographic questions Name: ____________________ Employee ID: ____________________ Sexual orientation: ____________________ Signature: ____________ Date: __/__/____ — Blank form with unpopulated labelled fields (placeholder guard keeps it below 75)
News: the national survey will ask about sexual orientation for the first time, and advocates say the question must stay optional. — News/training prose about the topic without a populated record (65 discovery at most)

Known false positives

The bare word "orientation" appears in unrelated contexts (employee orientation, building/map orientation) that have nothing to do with sexual orientation. Mitigation: The regex targets full orientation-specific phrases rather than the bare word "orientation"; enforcement requires a person-record context, and the high tier also requires a populated attribution.
"Coming out as" can appear in non-disclosure prose unrelated to sexual orientation (e.g. "the album is coming out as a double LP", "the report is coming out as scheduled"). Mitigation: The regex now requires "coming out as" to be followed by an orientation term, and enforcement requires person-record evidence in the same bounded span.