Bay Area Reporter - December 15, 2005
Bob Roehr

The conference is a once-a-decade event that is the culmination of smaller regional meetings. The NGLTF meeting highlighted issues particular to the LGBT community that need to be considered in addressing federal policies and programs on aging.

"LGBT people often have not been visible in that aging world, and because we have not been visible, we have not been included explicitly," said task force senior strategist Amber Hollibaugh. She said that San Francisco lesbian icons Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon "were phenomenal at the 1995 conference and made the issue visible, and were enormously powerful delegates." But much work remains to be done.

"There is no room for prejudice in the world of aging," Hollibaugh said. The reality is that LGBT members of the Baby Boomer generation often have led their lives openly and are not going to go back into the closet. It is important that they not face discrimination and that their caregivers be culturally competent in providing that care.

While several of the conference delegates are openly gay or lesbian, Terry Kaelber is the only one who represents an organization whose primary mission is directed toward LGBT seniors. He is executive director of SAGE, or Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders, the 28-year-old organization for gay seniors in New York City.

"There is some vague notion that we all age alike, that we must lose our individuality and become part of this great aging monolith," said Kaelber, who added that aging is very different for LGBT seniors because of "discrimination and antigay bigotry, which impacts our ability and willingness to access needed programs and services as we age."

"It is informed by the fact that we, by and large, age as single people without the traditional familial support of a spouse or children. It makes us more reliant on the programs that we are not so willing to access," he sai Panelist Norma Thomas at the "Make Room for All" meeting. Photo: Bob Roehr d.

"Aging as a single person, not just an LGBT person, without traditional familial support networks is highly correlated with increased isolation in old age, depression, substance abuse, medical and physical health complications, unnecessary institutionalization, and even premature death.

"For our community, adding antigay bigotry and discrimination compounds these outcomes," Kaelber said.

The reality of women's lives is that they devote the equivalent of 12 years to the role of informal caregiver, generally without compensation. They often take lower paying jobs to have the flexibility to carry out that role, said Laura Young, executive director of Older Women's League, an organization for midlife and older women. "As a result, women will lose $250,000 of wage wealth" in performing these tasks, Young said.

She said "the marriage issue" was important to aging members of the LGBT community, and pointed to the photos from a year ago in San Francisco; "More often than not, they were older couples who had been together for many years who were looking to get some kind of legal status or protection for the lives that they had build together."

OWL was the only aging organization that took a public stance against last year's Federal Marriage Amendment, which sought to ban gay marriage.

Young explained that health care benefits "become a tax liability for domestic partners, which doesn't exist for married couples" who do not have to pay taxes on them. She said the conference needs to talk about changing policies that codify such discrimination "if we are going to bring LGBT issues into the dialogue."

"I had an ostrich attitude about aging issues," said Mary McCarthy, 67. She testified with her partner Bonny Winokar about their marriage in Massachusetts and their fears with regard to Medicare and the house that they purchased and renovated.

McCarthy said under existing federal spend down requirements for Medicare, if one of them ended up in a nursing home, "One of us would be destitute and the other would be sick." The property of a traditionally married couple would be protected.

"In order to have a good old age filled with optimism, you must have a good young age filled with opportunities that continue throughout the lifecycle," said Norma Thomas, president of the Center on Ethnic and Minority Aging, in Philadelphia. The effects of poverty, racism, and homophobia do not magically disappear at the age of 60, she noted.

"All of the 'isms' come from our own chauvinism," said Regina Shavers, executive director of the Griot Circle, a group of primarily African American and Caribbean seniors. She said, the key to serving a diverse community is realizing that, "You just need to know that everybody else's life is not just like yours."

"If you have any gender variance, that is totally" another level of competency that has to be addressed. "When I get to the nursing home and they put one of them pink dresses on me, we are going to have a hard time."

"Just because a person comes to you for services, doesn't mean they are ready to tell you everything. People value their privacy very much," Shavers said. "People in my community survived with their secrecy" in the face of a church that condemned them, and a broader community that often was not accepting.

Shavers added, "We should be allowed to choose our own families and have the financial benefit of those connections."

Jim Campbell, president of the National Association of HIV Over Fifty, spoke of "the loss [from HIV] that has never been addressed" for gay males. "We built a family, and those families disappeared almost overnight."

He said HIV is not just a gay issue. Over 17 percent of newly diagnosed cases nationally are in those 50 or older, and the number is growing by about 1 percentage point a year.

A survey of HIV patients at the Fenway Community Health Center in Boston found that 62 percent of their caseload is 40 or older. And with the success of combination therapy and people with living longer, it is becoming a problem of aging. Campbell called it "an accident waiting to happen" in the gay community.
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