Chicago Police Station Converted to LGBT Senior Home

A former police station on the North Side of Chicago that once symbolized discrimination will be incorporated into a housing development for LGBT seniors in the Boystown neighborhood.

According to the Chicago Sun Times, “For $1, the city will sell the old Town Hall District station, 3600 N. Halsted, to Heartland Housing Inc., sources said. The nonprofit developer will incorporate the old station into new construction of about 90 apartments for senior citizens.”

The sale requires city council approval. Heartland Housing said it must secure tax credits and other funding sources to keep apartments affordable, with the funding process expected to take about a year. Apartments will be priced for lower-income renters.

Gay Marriage Complexities - Time Goes By, Gray & Gay

by Jan Adams (bio)

We are living a strange moment in the ongoing struggle to win full marriage rights for same-sex couples. We're clearly making progress.

Full marriage, with the same rights and obligations as heterosexual couples, is currently available in five states and the District of Columbia. Some ten or so other states maintain registries of domestic partnerships which give partners various legal rights depending on local laws.

The federal government is barred by the Defense of Marriage Act (1996) from recognizing any of these couples, but President Obama has said the Department of Justice should cease defending DOMA in court. However the Republican House of Representatives has hired its own law firm to defend the law.

Meanwhile, several national polls including one just this week from CNN say majorities now approve of gay marriage. This is a stunning, happy turnabout in the last few years.

What I want to share here are a couple of stories about some of the strange anomalies gay couples encounter because of the legal flux we are living in. Here's a bit of what it is really like to get older as part of an LGBT couple in this betwixt and between time.

A lesbian friend of mine recently reached the magic age of 65 - the moment so many of us anticipate with anxious hope - when Medicare eligibility kicks in. Her partner (they are registered with their city) has good health insurance from an employer so they have both been on that.

Mary visited the Social Security office and was told that yes, she would be put on Medicare Part A, but she didn't need to sign up for Medicare Part B because she could stay on her existing group plan without penalty as long as her younger partner was able to qualify them both. Great - that's settled.

Except then she got a letter saying that she would be penalized for failing to sign up for Medicare Part B. Huh? The clerk had made a mistake, a natural one.

It turns out that because of DOMA, the federal government can't recognize the health insurance she was already getting through a partner whose existence the Feds aren't allowed to notice. It took some work and several months delay to get that fixed and Mary onto Medicare Part B.

Interestingly, AARP has the best explanation I've seen of this wrinkle in the Medicare rules:

A domestic partner - someone who is not formally married to the employee but covered under his or her insurance as a family member — is also entitled to a special enrollment period. But this applies only to domestic partners of the opposite sex, according to the Social Security Administration.

Under the Defense of Marriage Act, same-sex partners — even those who are legally married under the laws of their state or country — do not get the same consideration.

The covered employee can delay Part B and later qualify for a special enrollment period in his or her own right. But his or her partner, though covered as a dependent by the same insurance, is not entitled to a special enrollment period and must therefore sign up for Part B at age 65 to avoid late penalties.

This Medicare wrinkle has nothing on the conundrums related to filing taxes.

Last December, after 32 years together, my partner and I decided we had better get registered with the state of California. Having grown up and grown older without any expectation that the state should be involved in our relationship, we'd never gotten around to this. But the experience of her lying in a trauma center waiting to see if she needed emergency brain surgery after a bicycle accident convinced us that we should reinforce our existing powers of attorney with everything we could find to assure we were treated as connected in any emergency.

So, without any particular romance, we trotted off to a notary public to fill in domestic partnership forms. Yhen we learned that the IRS had made a rule change last year that threw our tax preparations into complete confusion.

We had each always simply filed separate returns, paid up or gotten our refunds and that was that. But the IRS has decided it must take into consideration domestic partnerships in the community property states of California, Washington and Nevada even though domestic partners are still required under DOMA to file individual returns!

So domestic partners must also file joint returns as well even though those joint returns don't count. Or, at least, that's the best I could make of this rule. And better financial and legal minds than I didn't do much better.

I can convey the level of confusion this development caused gay couples by sharing what TurboTax, the tax prep software, advised.

Accurate tax return preparation for couples in this situation relies on the review and analysis of each couple’s individual agreements and related state law, within these new guidelines. Decisions on how to split income and expenses are based on a state’s community property law and the individual legal agreements made between couples at the time of their registered domestic partnership or same sex marriage. Given this, we can’t provide a fully guided federal experience in TurboTax at this time.

At this time, you have 3 options:

Option 1 – Manually prepare your individual federal tax returns in TurboTax by reporting your community income. We recommend this only if you are a couple with income just on W-2s, you don’t itemize deductions, and you are 50/50 partners. You will need to file these individual returns by mail.

Option 2 – Get help preparing your tax returns from a tax professional, especially if you have investments, rentals pensions or a business.

Option 3 – File an extension before April 19, 2011 and deal with this after that date when we expect to have more functionality and guidance built into the TurboTax experience.

That is, even the tax professionals are punting on the complications introduced by this federal decision. A New York Times blog had a good post on the various complications, some of which may end up beneficial to some gay couples, as well as unquestionably to tax preparers.

It turned out we didn't have to figure it out, for this year. In mid-March, while we were researching the rules, we received a notice from the California Secretary of State indicating that though we had submitted the papers in December 2010, they hadn't gotten around to filing our domestic partnership until 2011.

Rescued by official negligence! Our accountant friends assure us that by next year the Feds will have made some sense of the rules. We hope so.

Meanwhile we do get one tax benefit from having made our relationship legal. My health benefits used to be taxed by the state of California as income to her. Now she can deduct them on her California taxes. It's not a huge amount but every little bit helps.

Understand, I'm not really complaining. When gay couples finally do share in the legal structures that govern marriage, our lives will be more secure, just a little bit safer. In the long run. And we want, like most people, to be able to stand before the world and say, "This is the person who I love and we are making our lives together."

And I sure hope we get through this transition period on the way to legal marriage as soon as possible so we can stop dealing with the strange set of extra hoops that gay folks now have to jump through.

Gay Couples Closer to Receiving Medicaid Spousal Protections - NYTimes.com

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

Same-sex couples are one step closer to receiving protections that heterosexual married couples get when they receive long-term care through Medicaid — that is, the healthy partner will be able to keep some of the ailing partner’s money and remain in their home.

At least, that’s the goal. Right now, only opposite-sex married couples receive those rights because the federal government doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage.

To qualify for long-term care through Medicaid, individuals generally have to spend their money until it’s practically depleted. But married couples can keep more money so that healthy spouses don’t have to impoverish themselves to qualify the sick spouse for care. Nor do they have to worry about giving up their home to raise money to pay back Medicaid for its services after their spouse dies. They can stay put for the rest of their lives.

As a work-around, the Obama administration is close to notifying the state-run Medicaid programs about how they can replicate these protections for same-sex domestic partners, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding - Institute of Medicine

 

Released: March 31, 2011

Type:  Consensus Report

 

Topics: Select Populations and Health Disparities, Biomedical and Health Research Health Services, Coverage, and Access

Activity:  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health Issues and Research Gaps and Opportunities

 

Board:  Board on the Health of Select Populations

 

At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals—often referred to under the umbrella acronym LGBT—are becoming more visible in society and more socially acknowledged, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about their health status. While LGBT populations often are combined as a single entity for research and advocacy purposes, each is a distinct population group with its own specific health needs.

Furthermore, the experiences of LGBT individuals are not uniform and are shaped by factors of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location, and age, any of which can have an effect on health-related concerns and needs. Researchers still have a great deal to learn and face a number of challenges in understanding the health needs of LGBT populations.

To help assess the state of the science, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked the IOM to evaluate current knowledge of the health status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations; to identify research gaps and opportunities; and to outline a research agenda to help NIH focus its research in this area.

The IOM finds that to advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. Building a more solid evidence base for LGBT health concerns will not only benefit LGBT individuals, but also add to the repository of health information we have that pertains to all people.

The focus of Chapter 6 is Later Adulthood.

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Complete Report can read online or purchased.

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging New Portal on LGBT Caregiving

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is proud to announce the launch of its new portal on LGBT caregiving.

Caregiving is an issue that affects all of us—most of us will be caregivers or need care at some point in our lives. Providing care for a loved one can be difficult under any circumstances, but LGBT caregivers, in particular, face several unique challenges.

The Resource Center's caregiving section is designed to address these challenges. Please visit www.lgbtagingcenter.org to check out new caregiving articles, presentations and other resources, including:

• Informative articles on a number of LGBT caregiving issues, from the legal documents LGBT caregivers need, to finding LGBT-friendly home care workers
• Videos that vividly illustrate the issues unique to LGBT caregiving
• Publications for LGBT older adults and service providers, such as financial planning tool kits, tips for working with transgender clients and the latest research on LGBT aging issues
• Links to local resources in communities across the country, from caregiving and health care locators, to LGBT community centers
• Training and continuing education resources for aging services providers and LGBT organizations to help ensure that institutions serving older adults are welcoming to LGBT elders.

Survey & Raffle Winner
Thank you to everyone who took our survey. Your input is an essential part of ensuring that the Resource Center offers the information and tools most needed by LGBT older adults and those who support them. And congratulations to our survey raffle winner, C. Nancy Cook of Richmond, VA!

Best Regards,

Hilary Meyer
Director, National Resource Center on LGBT Aging

Nation’s First LGBT Homesharing Program Has Found a Match

By Tony Peregrin

The Golden Girls—Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia—had each other to exchange quips about men and life, usually over slices of cheesecake. In real life, many older LGBT adults in Boystown looking for companionship, and maybe a little extra income, are turning to the nation’s first LGBT homesharing program to find it.

The homesharing program at the Center on Halsted is a free service that matches LGBT seniors with younger renters who can help with chores and other household tasks in exchange for reduced rent.

The homesharing program officially launched in December 2010, and as of last month, the program has its first match: a gay male renter and a lesbian homesharing provider.

“There are other homesharing programs across the country, but our program is specifically designed for the LGBT community,” said Britta Larson, 31, homesharing manager at the Center. “As LGBT older adults age, they can become very isolated and, sometimes, they struggle to remain in their own homes. I have had older adults that were living comfortably in a lovely condo, but when their partner passed away, they were not eligible for their partner’s social security or pension, and now they are in a dire financial situation.”
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TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Meet David

by Jan Adams

When I think about topics for these Gay and Gray columns, I always worry a little about whether I'm failing to look adequately for material about or of relevance to gay male elders.

In my generation of LGBT people - a generation in which most of us began our lives in the closet and many of us emerged in public only in mid-life - there's often a pronounced cultural separation between the genders, perhaps especially in larger cities.

Many old lesbians know mostly other old lesbians; they have made intentional families with other lesbians and evolved a woman-centered culture. Old gay men have their own sub-culture; many saw their friendship networks devastated by the AIDS epidemic; they spent a life in peril and sometimes hiding and tend to stick with their own.

I feel very lucky that I happen to belong to a church community where we have quite a few of both genders of gay people - and lots of straight people too. Truly mixed communities are somewhat rare in our age group. That's too bad. We can enjoy each other.

So thinking about this month's column, I went looking for something from a gay male elder to share. I think you'll enjoy David. At 70, this expressive, British, working-class man decided his life story might be something younger people, especially gay men, could appreciate.
He got a lot of positive responses to this introductory piece, so he made four more video clips, carrying forward the story of how he grew up, joined the Royal Air Force (RAF), voluntarily left the service so he could be more open about his sexuality and in retirement has apparently taken full advantage of the protected legal status gays now enjoy in the United Kingdom.

They are way ahead of the United States. Britain long ago allowed gays to serve openly in the military, protected us from employment discrimination and the police campaigned against gay bashing.

In Part 2 of David's story, available here, he talks about his early youth, about realizing at age 12 that he was different. By 15, he was out of school and working.

He had some encounters including in movie theaters and "people [men] took an interest in me; I was always particular and very careful."

Yes, the young David was a looker. In Part 3 (here), he describes joining the Royal Air Force and realizing for the first time that he was not alone.

"There were thousands of airmen and among them, there were 100s and 100s and 100s of gay men, like me...it was instant dismissal if you were caught...but we lived in huts, sometimes there was movement between beds at 2 and 3 in the morning...it happened."

David loved the RAF. He served in various isolated Middle Eastern posts in an all male environment. He thrived. No one asked any questions because there were no women on the posts. He had one or two serious affairs, but the guys were always posted away and the romances died.

In Part 4 (here), David follows up with the story of his civilian life - the United Kingdom had decriminalized homosexuality and he was able to do the same job he'd done for the RAF as a civilian! He urges gay men to come out.

"If you are wondering how to approach your friends -- if someone asks you if you are gay, just tell them...I say that because, once you come out, you will then find out who your friends are!"

He discovered he had a lot of good friends.

Finally David recorded what he calls a Postscript. He thanks all the people who have thanked him - and speaks directly to young people who have been sending comments. "You'll be okay...you will start to believe in yourself..."
This wonderful sequence of videos makes me wish that more elders of all sexual orientations would record their stories. David is saying very much the same sort of thing as the folks who recently responded to bullying of gay teens by recording "it gets better" messages.

Even though these times are hard and sometimes frightening, I suspect that most readers here can agree that we've more and more lived into the solid essence of ourselves as we age. We've got life wisdom to share with younger folks. Maybe we should record more of it.

Happy Valentine's Day from SAGE

Happy Valentine's Day from SAGE! February is National Heart Awareness Month,and SAGE wants to ensure that your heart is healthy. Download it's fact sheet, "Ten Things Every LGBT Older Adult Should Know About Heart Disease," and share it with your friends and loved ones. Don't forget to:

305 Seventh Avenue, 6th Fl | New York, NY 10001 US

National Resource Center on LGBT Aging Seeks Input from the Public

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is conducting a survey to gather input from a wide range of people on the website it is creating.  The site will provide educational information, training, and technical assistance to organizations and LGBT older adults on a variety of important issues related to LGBT aging.  The Center is the first federally-funded entity to address the needs of LGBT older adults.  Given this historic importance, your input to the design of the website is critical.  The information you provide will be used to help determine what content to include and how effective the Center is in reaching its intended audiences.  Your answers will be anonymous and will not be linked to you in any way.  However, if you wish to be contacted in the future, there will be an optional question at the end of the survey where you may provide contact information.

The deadline for completing the survey is February 6, 2011.  To access the survey, please go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/lgbtagingcenter

The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is a nationwide program of Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) and ten partner organizations (American Society on Aging; Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging and Longevity, Hunter College; CenterLink; FORGE Transgender Aging Network; GRIOT Circle; The LGBT Aging Project; National Association of Area Agencies on Aging; National Council on Aging’s National Institute of Senior Centers; Openhouse; and PHI).

If you have any questions about the survey, please send an e-mail to: info@lgbtagingcenter.org

The Center thanks you for your time and valuable input.   

When I'm Old and Gay

by David Mixner

In the Bible in Palms 71:18 there is a verse that says, "When I am old and gray, do not forsake me..."
The LGBT community is about to lose their tribal leaders, elders and generational history without even a peep. In addition, our collective soul might be scarred for ignoring the plight and needs of those whose sacrifice made it possible for today's generation. Most will never even know or enjoy the rights that they fought so hard for you to celebrate today. They couldn't adopt children, run for office or serve in the military.

Often they were institutionalized or forced to live lives of lies and fear.

The baby boom generation of LGBT citizens is the one that spans our history from the oppressive 50's, to the transitional 60's, the liberating 70's, the plague ridden 80's and the beginning of hope in the 1990's. A good deal of the male population of those times already passed in the prime of their youth from HIV/AIDS. Some of the most remarkable women LGBT leaders came to power in that time. Epic battles and tragic stories are waiting to be recorded and told to future generations.

The LGBT community must acknowledge that this generation of LGBT baby boomers is getting old in a time with few services to meet their needs as LGBT seniors. Often they are in smaller and smaller living units, scraping by with little food, limited access to healthcare and almost no living facilities to share with other senior LGBT citizens. The few gay men that are still alive after the AIDS onslaught have few or no peers to share their senior years since the disease wiped out so many of their friends. Like it or not, what remains from the pandemic is an epidemic of loneliness among our seniors.

Adding to our shame in treatment of our LGBT seniors is the fact that we are losing our history.

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TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Elders Speak Out: "It gets better!"

by Jan Adams (bio)
The horror of the bullying some gay youth experience busted out of the closet for many folks in the past month with the story of Tyler Clementi's suicide. When fellow students covertly broadcast the young man's make-out session with another boy over the internet, the Rutgers student concluded it was better to be dead than gay and jumped off the George Washington Bridge
.
Suicide claims entirely too many gay teenagers, especially young boys. Clementi's death made The New York Times, but these unhappy events happen without much more than local notice much far too often.

In response, Seattle gay advice columnist Dan Savage launched the It Gets Better YouTube project, asking older folks to record messages to young people encouraging them to hold on through the difficult teenage years and to hang on to hope of a safe and free future as open gay people.

Savage challenged his readers:

“... gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay - or from ever coming out - by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

“Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids. So here's what you can do...Make a video. Tell them it gets better.”

The response has been huge; the site now includes more than 2000 clips.

Most of the videos, naturally, are from folks not so far in age from gay teenagers; many are from college students who are reveling in new freedoms, in meeting more diverse people, in living away from home.

But I thought it would be interesting to see if I could find a few by people we'd consider elders and near-elders to share. Here are some that I think you'll find interesting and moving.

Fashion designer Tim Gunn talks about his teenage attempt to kill himself and promotes a resource for kids who are thinking about suicide:


"Please don't leave...it's worth it. Stick around."


Deb Adler says, "You don't have to put up with someone else's crap." I can relate to that. This is a little longer than most of these, but adds a different dimension about some ways young people can push back.
Grace Rogers spoke out as a parent supporting gay children:
"Things happen to us all...it's not always easy...talk to us...we're all in this together."

The fellow from Lubbock who made the video above speaks about being abused by a priest as a boy and, later, finally finding a church he could be fully himself in.
Looking through these videos with older speakers, I was surprised by how many were made by religious people who had struggled through being raised to believe that God hated them and much later found peace in a church or belief system that reassured them that they were lovable and could be loved. It was a rejecting faith system that made them so desperate as young people - and often, it was an inclusive, affirming religious community that helped them become more whole.

For example, gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson made one such a video.

It was a nice surprise when working my way through hundreds of these to discover two acquaintances had filmed one that I think can best be described as utterly charming. They explain:

"Harry, a composer, and Wayne, an Episcopal priest, live a cholesterol-lowering life-style in mid-Michigan. Even as some of the body stuff does get a little harder to put up with, it still is getting better."

Enjoy - and remember there are still confused gay kids who need to be reminded, "it gets better!"
TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Elders Speak Out: "It gets better!"

National Resource Center on LGBT Aging

SAGE is proud to announce the launch of the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging! Visit the web site today. Click the link below.

National Resource Center on LGBT Aging

Aging's Challenges Amplified for Gays and Lesbians - NYTimes.com

Image via WikipediaBy PAULA SPAN

David and his partner, Paschal, together for more than 20 years, married during the brief period that same-sex marriages were legal in California. They’re in their 60s, in decent health and financial shape. Yet thinking about their future makes David uneasy.

With an eldercare system (if you can call it a system) that depends on younger family members shouldering responsibility for older ones, perhaps any childless and aging couple would share his concerns. But gay men and lesbians face particular challenges, as David pointed out to me in a recent e-mail.

Let him count the ways. “The guys who are 65 and older now generally came of age, and came out, when doing so meant alienation from your family,” David wrote. “Many of the older gays I know are still estranged.” They don’t feel they can rely on younger relatives for help.

David and Paschal (citing privacy concerns, they asked that their full names not be used) expect to have to care for themselves — not because they’re estranged from family members, but because their nieces and nephews live far away. So David is considering other options.

If the couple wanted to retire to Paschal’s home state in the South, where senior housing communities would be much less expensive, “we’d have a hard time finding a life care facility that would accept us as a married couple,” David wrote. “And I doubt the other residents would be too welcoming if we did get in. And church-sponsored places — often a good value for straight folks — are largely not available for open gays.”

A number of researchers have found that, for those reasons, older gay men and lesbians sometimes conceal their sexual orientation when they enter nursing homes or assisted living facilities, effectively recloseting themselves at one of life’s most vulnerable passages.


At older ages, too, a number of the federal policies that protect married couples come into force, leaving gay men and lesbians, even those who marry in their own states, at a comparative financial disadvantage. Paschal’s Social Security benefits, for instance, are considerably greater than David’s, but David won’t be eligible for the spousal and survivor benefits that other widowers receive should something happen to Paschal.
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TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Involuntary Retirement

by Jan Adams (bio)

There's a lot of involuntary retirement happening in this awful economy. I'm sure some readers here are finding themselves out of work sooner than they anticipated or hoped. Ageism has always pushed older people out of work before we wished. Long time readers know Ronni started this blog when staring at this reality.

What I want to offer here is the story of a different kind of involuntary retirement that sometimes happens to gays and lesbians, in particular those trying to serve their country. The Service Members Legal Defense Network has published this letter from the spouse of a retired U.S. Navy officer as her contribution to the ongoing discussion of repeal of the Pentagon's "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" policy (DADT) which effectively prevents open and honest service by LGBT people in the military.

The author wants it publicized, so I am simply sharing Lynne Kennedy's letter to military authorities who are currently assessing the potential impact of repeal. [Emphasis is mine.] - Jan Adams

---

In 1990 - while working as a reference librarian at the Library of Congress - I met Joan Darrah, an active duty naval officer. I already knew about the ban on open service, but I soon woke up to the harsh reality that loved ones of gay and lesbian family members are forced to serve in silence, too.

Over the years, Joan had adjusted to living two lives - in the closet at work and out after hours. For me, it was a bit of an adjustment as I had been fortunate to work for an employer who valued my skills and expertise and realized that my being a lesbian in no way detracted from my ability to do a great job.

I knew that Joan could be deployed at any moment. She may be away from home for two or three years. I realized that being with an active duty military officer was even more constricting than I could have possibly imagined and I worried constantly about Joan’s well being. Yet, through it all, I knew our relationship was worth the compromises. I knew we had to make it work for Joan to continue to serve our country.

There were so many things that we had to be careful about. For example, Joan had asked that I not call her at work unless it was truly an emergency. When we were out in public, if Joan saw someone from work, I learned to “disappear” until Joan’s co-worker moved on. We didn’t dare go to nice restaurants on Valentine’s Day or even Saturday nights. We could not show any familiarity while out in public. I went to parties at colleagues' homes alone lest a guest I didn't know learn that Joan was in the Navy.

The events of September 11, 2001, caused us both to appreciate more fully the true impact of DADT on our lives and the reality of our mutual sacrifices. At 8:30AM that morning, Joan went to a meeting in the Pentagon. At 9:30AM she left that meeting. At 9:37AM, the plane flew into the Pentagon and destroyed the exact space that Joan had left less than eight minutes earlier, killing seven of her colleagues.

In the days and weeks that followed, Joan went to several funerals and memorial services for her co-workers who had been killed. Most people attended these services with their spouses whose support was critical at this difficult time, yet Joan was forced to go alone, even though I really wanted to be with her to provide support.

"As the numbness began to wear off, it hit me how incredibly alone I would have been had Joan been killed. The military is known for how it pulls together and helps people; we talk of the "military family," which is a way of saying we always look after each other, especially in times of need. But, none of that support would have been available for me, because under DADT, I didn’t exist.

In fact, I would have been one of the last people to know had Joan been killed because nowhere in her paperwork or emergency contact information had Joan dared to list my name.

Whenever I hear Joan recount the events of that day, I relive it and realize all over again how devastated I would have been had she been killed. I also think of the partners of service members injured or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are unable to get any support from the military and they must be careful about the amount of support they offer to their closeted service member loved ones.

The events of September 11th caused us to stop and reassess exactly what was most important in our lives. During that process, we realized that this discriminatory law was causing us to make a much bigger sacrifice than either of us had ever admitted.

Eight months later, in June 2002, Joan retired from the U.S. Navy, and I retired from the Library of Congress. If it wasn’t for DADT, we might both still be serving in our respective positions.

TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Involuntary Retirement

The Truth About Gays, Lesbians, and Social Security Benefits

Thank You For Your Call from Shawn Nee / discarted on Vimeo.

Local celebrities welcome Scottish service for older gays - PinkPaper.com

Image via Wikipedia

One of Scotland’s first services aimed at older gay people has been endorsed by a string of celebrities, describing it as a “service desperately needed”.

LGBT Age will tackle social exclusion and isolation through social, befriending, information and advocacy services, as part of the LGBT Centre for Health and Well-being.

Garry McGregor, LGBT age coordinator, said support for the scheme was “testament” to the need for an age-linked programme.
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Gay Man Prevented From Dying Partner Wins Settlement | News | Advocate.com

Image via Wikipedia

An elderly gay man who was prevented from seeing his dying partner in the hospital social workers will receive $600,000 in a settlement, reports the Mercury News. Clay Greene, 78, of Guerneville, Calif filed a lawsuit against Sonoma County’s Public Guardian program earlier this year, claiming he was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation.
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• Sonoma Co settles gay discrimination suit (sfgate.com)
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Report: More Seniors Living With HIV :: EDGE New England

Image via Wikipedia

by Steve Weinstein
 
On July 15, the New York City Department of Health released a report that confirmed in the most astonishing way earlier findings that the population of people living with HIV and AIDS was aging: three-quarters of those people in the city are now in their 40s or older, and more than one-third are over age 50.

Just as they do in the HIV population in general, women constitute the largest-growing numbers in HIV-positive older people. The report confirms one released last month by Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the city’s (and the world’s) largest private AIDS service organization.
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• HIV infection rate in over 50s doubles (independent.co.uk)
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A lengthy engagement

by Katherine Frey-The Washington Post

Henry Schalizki, 88, and Bob Davis, 89, first met in 1942 in Rhode Island. They happened to be in the same place at the same time and spent the entire night talking, but oddly enough nothing more happened.

Three years later, the pair crossed paths in Baltimore. A romance that has lasted more than 60 years soon followed.

On June 20, they exchanged vows on the balcony of the presidential suite at the J.W. Marriott in Washington.
Their second encounter is when the sparks began to fly. It was during that run-in at a bar in Baltimore that Schalizki learned Davis had moved to his hometown for work and that he was staying in a seedy boarding house.

Schalizki invited him to stay the night in his guest room, saying, "tomorrow we'll find you something." But that never happened. They fell in love, and Davis "stayed and stayed."
. . . .
Through good times and bad, sickness and health, through Stonewall and Vietnam, through the terms of 12 U.S. presidents, starting with Harry Truman. Through the loss of more friends than they care to count, the two have shared their lives together. And now, their union is legally recognized.

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TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Pat's Story

by Jan Adams (bio) in which she thinks out loud for us on issues of aging lesbians and gay men. Jan also writes on many topics at her own blog, Happening-Here, and you will find her past Gay and Gray columns here.

Last summer, my friend Pat turned 80. At her party she made available a memoir of her life compiled with the help of her friend Laura. It's a fascinating tale. It also reminds me, a lesbian now 62, just how much had changed by the time I came along, in part through the bravery of women like Pat.
For this column, Pat has given me permission to share some of her story (in italic type) and I'll counterpose to some observations about my age group to bring out the contrasts. The 18 years between us made for many differences. Pat begins:

I was born at home, with the help of a midwife, near Hayward, California, on July 12, 1929. That's exactly what my birth certificate says, "near Hayward...”
“I would call the neighborhood 'city lots' but in those days, that meant quarter acre lots...and everyone had vegetable gardens, chickens, rabbits...everyone. It was the depression!

“...We were low class. Now I guess the word is working class. Everyone was poor, but everyone got by. Like many others in the neighborhood, my mother and her sisters worked at Hunt Brothers Cannery, which was only a block away.”

During Pat's childhood, the Depression and a semi-rural, neighborhood-centered life was the reference norm for many Americans. I grew up in a big city in the prosperous 50s - my reality included a strong sense that national well-being derived from industrial production. We would drive by the Niagara Falls chemical factories (think Love Canal) and the refinery by the river, burning off oil day and night. My parents looked at them proudly. Delight in sheer productive capacity was what World War II had taught my parents and their friends.

”I never did very well at school. I had a very hard time with learning to read. Looking back, I wonder if I had some hearing loss even then, or some kind of learning disability. Who knows? But I really struggled. By the time I was 16, just starting 10th grade, I was impatient to go to work, earn a living, have some money in my pocket. So that's what I did, I quit school and went to work in the canneries. Within a year, I'd settled into line work at Owens Illinois glass factory, although I'd had to fudge my age a little in order to get hired...

“No one would believe me if I told you how shy and quiet and serious I was when I started at Owens. I was a 'mind your own business' kind of person. It took quite a few years before I began to speak out and express myself...it was a slow process. But gradually I got more confident. I became active in the union, I was a shop steward, and even union president. Part of that 'growing up' included going back and earning my GED. Owens encouraged people to be educated and was very supportive about that.”

By the time I came along, anyone with the slightest aspirations had been convinced they had to finish high school. And the post-World War II G.I. bill had even made college imaginable for wide swathes of the population. Apparently the Owens Illinois company shared in the national push for more education in the 1950s.

”Owens was a community in itself - there were almost 2000 employees altogether and we did shift work, one week on days, one week on swing, then a week working graveyard; that's how they did it in those days, and that was my life for the next 30+ years. Owens had a women's softball team, and Owens had women like me! I made friends, buddies; I didn't feel so alone...

“In those early days at Owens my hair was short - they all knew...but the word "lesbian" was never used. You were 'butch.'

"I remember reading The Well of Loneliness...I thought, 'wow, they write books about it!' There was so much I was in the dark about...

“My social life centered at Owens. There were gay bars that you could go to, Last Chance, Pearl's, but I was cautious, not wanting to get caught in a pick-up, a raid, which were frequent particularly in the 40s and 50s. Owens had a policy that what you did away from work was a reflection on your work...so if you weren't 'a good citizen' you could get yourself fired.

“My buddies and I were attracted to straight women. That's all that we knew; that's just how it was. We always hoped they would stay with us 'forever,' and some were lucky; my buddy Mick and her partner Erla were together about 30 years until Erla's death. Most of us, though, would end up with broken hearts. We all did the best we could.”

It wasn't much easier to be a lesbian teenager in the early 60s, at least as I experienced that time. The difference was that a kind of snickering prurience that characterized the 1950s had taught women who were striving uncomfortably to fulfill the feminine mystique that one of the ways they could flunk their female role was to be a homosexual.

Mary McCarthy's novel, The Group, was an artifact of that consciousness. There was a sort of dirty awareness that some people were homosexual - that those unfortunates would probably live a sad, lonely life and die a miserable death. No one wanted to be one of those people, even those of us who were gay.

Yet by the 1970s, there began to be visible gay people who were saying, “no! there's nothing wrong we me!" Gay visibility, "coming out," began to change attitudes, to make being gay just part of life, not a dirty secret.
Moreover, change was coming for women...

”I knew from my experiences at Owens that there was no reason a woman could not be a crew leader or even a manager. We were training the men, and they got the promotions. There had never been a woman in management at the Owens Oakland plant.
“In the early 70s, with Equal Opportunity, I filed a grievance to become crew leader. There was a lot of haggling back and forth, management would come up with reasons against, and I'd respond; it kept on and on and finally they said, 'OK, Pat, we give up,' and I became the first woman crew leader at that Oakland plant.

“A few years later I was finally promoted to management - no more shift work, no more hourly pay! My final position at Owens before retirement in 1984, was as a 'service engineer,' visiting our customers' facilities, mostly at that time wineries all over northern California, and trouble shooting whatever problems they might be having with the manufacture of our various commercial containers.”

My generation really got the benefit of women like Pat standing up for themselves. I can remember when the newspaper classified ads were divided into "help wanted: male" and "help wanted: female." But by the time I landed in San Francisco in the 1970s, it was possible - though sometimes difficult - for me to make a living in construction.

Sure, there were lots of guys who didn't think I could do it. Some women I knew were harassed on the job. But those guys could not stop me as long as I could do the work. And in less stereotypically male jobs, women were getting into everything. Times had changed.
Pat closes her memoir:

”I was almost 60 before I traveled anywhere outside the U.S. but since then, I've been lucky enough to see Australia including Darwin and Kakadu National Park, also Singapore, Hong Kong, also Paris, London, Portugal and Madera lsland where my family was from - and New York City, the Southwest and even Las Vegas.

“I'm glad to have seen all those places, but now I'm glad to stay home; I'm happy with my dog Pebbles, my garden, all the projects around my house that never seem to get finished, you know? There's never enough time for all I want to do.

“And every day I give thanks to the Creator; I give thanks for everything. I walk in my garden and every little growing thing is a miracle. There has to be something larger than a man or a woman, larger than 'God' to create all this! It's a shame we don't spend more time in awe about what's all around us, and appreciating it rather than destroying it. So I give thanks for life, for the life of every one and everything around me.”

I want to feel that kind of delight and gratitude for living when I'm 80!


TIME GOES BY | GAY AND GRAY: Pat's Story