part 3, The truth about elder care for the LGBT community

Be sure to read part one and part two of "The Senior Situation".

If it’s true that LGBT seniors are being forced back into the closet at retirement communities, assisted living facilities and nursing homes across the U.S., the folks running those establishments obviously have an obligation to address the problem.

But what about those of us in the LGBT community who aren’t over the age of 65—do we have an obligation as well? Those in the know say the answer is “yes,” though don’t take that to mean they’re wagging their fingers at us.

“People often ask me if the problem is that gay people don’t like to think about getting old,” says Michael Adams, executive director at New York City-based Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE). “Well, you know what? The reality is that most people—gay or straight—don’t like to think about getting old!

“Of course, we actually think about it all the time in various ways. If we didn’t think about it, we wouldn’t be saving for retirement, for instance. So we do think about it, even LGBT people, but we don’t often think about one very important piece of the puzzle: We have to make the retirement world ready for us by the time we get there. And we need to make it ready for us now, so the people in our community who are already there can benefit as well.”

David Latina, founder and president of Oakland, Calif.-based Barbary Lane Senior Communities, a 46-unit operation that bills itself as “a place where every letter of LGBT can live life to the fullest and love without boundaries,” suggests many LGBT youngsters haven’t yet stepped up to the plate because the gay community, in general, is ageist.

“More so than the straight community,” he says. “A lot of our culture is centered around youth and beauty, and that becomes a tremendous issue for us as we age. There’s very little connectivity between generations in the gay community. ‘Traditional’ families stay connected through certain cultural/familial bonds, such as anniversaries, birthdays and holidays that provide support networks. As LGBT people age, though, there seems to be less and less of that”

Steven David, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in geropsychology-neuropsychology at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, agrees.

“There definitely seems to be a disconnect between younger and older gay people,” he says. “I’m not sure if it’s because we’re not talking about biological family members when we talk about LGBT elders or what, but in other settings, when a widowed grandmother starts to fail and she can’t take care of herself, other family members come together and begin a dialogue about how to take care of her.”

Although David sees that happening to a certain extent within the LGBT community—with older gays and lesbians taking care of their similarly aging friends—he doesn’t see it happening much intergenerationally.

“It may be happening between peers and friends who are looking out for their same-age peers, but I’m not sure we’ve got the same intergenerational dialogue occurring in the LGBT community that occurs in the broader community,” he says. “That would be helpful.”

David suggests ageism isn’t limited to the younger segment of the LGBT community. In fact, some of the research he has conducted in Los Angeles suggests older gay men, for instance, can be just as ageist as their younger counterparts.

“People who are more involved in the community in some way tend to be less ageist than those who aren’t,” David says. “So we shouldn’t just lump all young gay men into a group, saying they don’t care about their elders. There’s just no mechanism in place within our community to get this kind of intergenerational dialogue and social support network going.”

Putting those mechanisms in place, and as soon as possible, should be a priority for all LGBT people, says Adams, who says they’ll be needed if we’re to make the senior living environment one that is welcoming not only to today’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors but all of us that follow in their footsteps.

“We have to help people across all generations of the LGBT community see that this is an issue for all of us,” he says. “We have a moral responsibility to protect the older generations that came before us and paved the way for us to live the lives we do. If we’re lucky, we’re going to grow up to be seniors ourselves someday, and we should want there to be a welcoming place for us as well.

“Most of us, regardless of our age, are saving money and doing all sorts of things to get ready for retirement, which is great, but there’s more to it than that when you’re part of the LGBT community. There have been plenty of situations where people with a lot of money still found themselves in very precarious positions when they got older because they had not figured out a way to address some of the challenges still before us. We have the power to address them now and make life better for them and for ourselves.”