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Linda Ellis, executive director of the Atlanta Lesbian Health Initiative, served as a moderator for the Feb. 25 LGBT Elder Town Hall Meeting. ALHI was one of several gay community groups that helped organize the meeting.
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: ZACK HUDSON
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Their voices would have to be heard. Some, though, had an easier time than others saying exactly what was on their minds.
“I don’t want to grow old next to a farmer from Gay, Ga. I want to grow old next to a drag queen,” popped a woman’s voice from the crowd.
The speaker was one of about 120 people who filled the Decatur Public Library auditorium to capacity Feb. 25 for a Sunday afternoon rap session to answer an old question, and, hopefully, start a new conversation.
Where do gay men and lesbians go when they reach retirement age?
It’s a question gerontologists and sociologists have been pondering for some time. But for those who attended the LGBT Elder Town Hall meeting, sponsored by a consortium of community organizations, the answer is plain: They’re staying right here.
“When we get in our fifties, people think we die, and we’re not dead,” said another woman from the town hall crowd.
And they won’t be silenced — not by a long shot. The very first “Baby Boomers,” the approximately 76 million people born in the U.S. in the 20-plus years following World War II, began turning 60 in 2006. According to a 2000 study by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the Boomers include between 2 and 3 million gay men and lesbians, a sub-generation who turned out to be activists whether they wanted to or not.
“This is a pioneering population in that we’re about to witness the first group of out older lesbians and gay men,” said Brian deVries, a professor of gerontology at San Francisco State University.
Most have lived their lives differently than their heterosexual peers, which presented challenges of identity and respect during their working years. As the gay Boomers move forward into standard retirement age, deVries, who is gay, fears that their differences could pose more immediate problems for their survival.
“I always imagined I’d end up living with my friends,” a 64-year-old woman who introduced herself as Liz told the town hall crowd.
Reminiscent of “The Golden Girls” though it may be, deVries explained that Liz’s twilight years scenario reflects research which finds aging gay men and lesbians lack the built-in caregiver structure of most of their heterosexual peers who married and raised children.
A 2006 Zogby survey sponsored by the Lesbian & Gay Aging Issues Network of the American Society on Aging asked 1,000 gay men and lesbians between ages 40 and 61 from across the U.S. about their lifestyles and plans for retirement. Concerns over housing, finances and health — which mirror their heterosexual counterparts — took the forefront. But as deVries explained, gay and lesbian Boomers will enter mid-life and retirement largely on their own.
More than half of the lesbians who answered the survey reported not having children, and about three-fourths of the gay men reported being childless. Two-thirds of the surveyed gay men did not have long-term partners at the time of the survey, compared to about half of the lesbian respondents.
“Both of those groups, partners and children, are the ones most frequently called upon as caregivers,” deVries said.
Gay men and lesbians often configure their own system of care with networks of friends, deVries added, but a lack of recognition of those relationships in society complicates delicate issues like end-of-life care, and legal and financial decisions.
“Social systems for older adults are not really well set up to support and work around friends as caregivers. They’re well set up to work around spouses and children. Once you’re outside of that legal, legitimate social structure, social systems don’t know quite how to deal with that,” he said.
Groups in Atlanta and other urban centers across the country are directly addressing the discrepancy in the aging industry — healthcare providers, long-term care facilities, community organizations, housing providers and funeral homes — by working to implement standards of care and service to older gay men and lesbians.
In Atlanta, one of the goals of the LGBT Elder Town Hall meeting, which was organized by multiple gay organizations, was to create a style sheet of ways to address and treat gay men and lesbians whose lives and situations most often will not mirror their straight contemporaries.
More importantly, the group ...
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