Gay old people
LGBT Elders
Lesbian, Gay, Attracted to both genders, and Transgender (LGBT) Elders
We have survived a lifetime of discrimination — and we are resilient.
Conservative estimates suggest that there are more than 3 million LGBT people age 55 and older in the U.S.—1.5 million of whom are 65 and older. This over-65 segment will double in the next few decades as millions of Americans enter retirement age. Unfortunately, due to a lifetime of discrimination, many LGBT people age without proper community supports, in poor health, and financially insecure.
Additionally, many LGBT elders encounter aging providers ill-equipped to face their needs. Worse, rarely do policy makers account for the unique or disproportionate needs of LGBT elders. This means that the lifetimes of discrimination that many LGBT older people contain survived continue into later life. Here are three of the biggest challenges facing LGBT elders today:
Poverty and Reduced Economic Security
Many LGBT older adults deal with poverty and with reduced economic security. For LGBT older adults, a lifetime of employment discrimination and other factors contributes to disproportionately high poverty rates. One examine found that
LGBTQ Older People
*This section was created as a collaboration between GLAAD and SAGE
According to national lobbying and services company SAGE, when referring in general to older people the preferred phrasing is older people, not “elderly” or “senior citizens.” This might change depending on the person you are writing about. As always, demand people what language they use to describe themselves.
While the lack of national data makes it impossible to know the spot-on size of the older LGBTQ mature person population, it is estimated that by 2030, there will be 7 million LGBTQ people in the U.S. who are 50 and older. LGBTQ older people face distinct challenges when compared with their non-LGBTQ peers. A 2010 MAP/SAGE study start that older LGBTQ people are twice as likely to be single and live alone, and four times less likely to possess children, making social isolation a significant challenge for this community. In addition, LGBTQ older people are more likely to face povertyhomelessness, and physical and mental health challenges.
When reporting on LGBTQ older people, topics to explore include:
LGBTQ People as caregivers
LGBTQ older people are more likely than their non-LGBTQ
Is Being an Older LGBTQ+ Person as Terrifying as It Sounds?
Someone asked me the other night what my favorite movie was, and I immediately said Arthur, prefer I always do. Then they said, “Never heard of it? When did it come out?” I didn’t answer 1981, nearly 40 years ago. At that moment I felt old, out of date, and superficially shallow.
I’m in the early stages of a book project writing about noteworthy LGBTQ+ people who are 50 and above, and I am hearing about how many of them came of age during the AIDS crisis, how coming out was so much more of an ordeal, on average, than it is today. And sadly, how they lacked role models from our collective when growing up that might have helped them come out sooner or provided lessons on how to be older and LGBTQ+.
Above all else, surprisingly, most say they are at their happiest now. Grateful to own come out of the AIDS crisis alive, living more freely as an LGBTQ+ person in this time and era, and realizing late in life that they, truly, fought the superb fight to be who they are today.
But that can’t be said for everyone. After I wrote a column with New York Times columnist Frank Bruni about gay men and aging last year, I heard from m
LGBT People: Let’s Talk About Ageism
August 2013 | Robert Espinoza
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This article was originally written on The Huffington Post by Robert Espinoza, the Senior Director of Public Policy and Communications of Services & Representation for GLBT Elders (SAGE).
In a recent op-ed in The Advocate (“In Defense of Aging”), screenwriter and author Jon Bernstein explores how lgbtq+ men understand their hold aging, given their traumatic life experiences and the cultural obsession with beauty and youth. Bernstein invokes Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a grim novel about the consequences of vanity, authored by a “middle-aged man” who died in “shame, poverty and exile after a series of public trials that punished him for his sexual orientation.”
To frame his overarching argument, Bernstein recalls the agony of living through the preliminary years of the AIDS epidemic (“The grim reaper was forever lurking in the shadows”) and draws from this experience to craft a hypothesis: male lover men in this period period witnessed many of their friends die in the 1980s, later saw their friends survive as h