The Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee passed the bill by a vote of 6-3. It now moves to Assembly Appropriations Committee.

“No person should be taxed out of their home because of a discriminatory law,” said Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors.

“This bill will help ensure that people do not risk losing their home when their partner dies. To add the loss of one’s home to the devastation suffered from the loss of a loved one is unconscionable.”

Under current law, spouses and Registered Domestic Partners avoid paying property tax increases on their home following the death of one partner.

However, a number of senior LGBT couples who have faced decades of discrimination and even violence, have been reluctant to register for domestic partnerships, as their records then become readily available through the Secretary of State — making their sexual orientation a matter of public record.

By contrast, straight couples are offered the option of a confidential marriage, allowing their records to remain confidential. As a result, senior LGBT couples are at greater risk for unequal treatment under the law, said Kors.

“This bill will help protect LGBT seniors from facing further discrimination and injustice,” said Assemblymember Kevin de Leon (D).

“Because marriage is not currently an option for all committed, loving couples, we must pass this important law that helps bridge the gulf of discrimination.”

©365Gay.com 2009

The report, appearing in the WHO Bulletin, notes that not only are family doctors not recommending regular HIV tests for senior patients, there have been few studies on HIV among those over 50.

“In the last 5 years, only 13 of 30 surveys included older males and none included older females. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the United States of America does not collect data from people older than 49,” the WHO report said.

Yet information from those studies  indicate that about 11 percent of new HIV diagnoses and eight percent in Europe are in the over 50 age group.

The studies also suggest that men over 50 are less likely to engage in safe sex.

“These individuals have a shorter time from diagnosis to onset of AIDS, reflecting both age-related faster progression to AIDS and doctors’ failure to consider HIV as a diagnosis,” the WHO study conducted by Minnesota’s St. Olaf College said.

“HIV prevalence and incidence in the over-50-year-olds seem surprisingly high and the risk factors are totally unexplored. Understanding the epidemiology of HIV infection in older individuals can lead to interventions to make these years safer and more enjoyable.”

The WHO report suggests greater research into HIV among older people and the role of erectile dysfunction drugs, especially in the Third World.

“While erectile dysfunction is common and erectile dysfunction drugs are widely available in developing countries, no study has been done of their possible impact on the HIV epidemic, although their use in industrialized countries has been associated with risky safety practices,” the report said.

“We begin the New Year knowing that all LGBT people, including youth and seniors, have better protections and rights than ever before,” said Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors. EQCA pushed for passage of all three bills.

“The new laws provide important protections for members of our community and reinforce our state’s commitment to treat all people with respect and dignity under the law, regardless of their differences.”

The Foster Youth School Safety Education Act helps protect foster youth against harassment and discrimination at school. The new law educates foster care youth and their caregivers about existing California laws that protect students against bias. It was authored by Assemblymember Julia Brownley (D) and supported by the National Association of Social Workers and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network.

The second new law will help prevent bias in senior care facilities and nursing homes. Authored by former Sen. Carole Migden (D) it requires licensed healthcare professionals who have constant interaction with seniors to participate in a training program that focuses on preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Many health professionals already receive cultural diversity training, but it does not include information and education about LGBT issues.

Basic rights, such as the choice to live in the same nursing home with a partner and the right to hospital visitation are routinely denied to same-gender couples in older age, according to a 2000 study from the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The study also found that same-gender partners lack essential protections, including Medicaid benefits and access to pensions, which typically protect the homes and retirement funds of surviving spouses who are married.

The third law is the Civil Rights Act of 2008. It strengthens existing law to ensure protections based on gender, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status and sexual orientation.

The law clarifies sections of law that prohibit discrimination in insurance and government services and activities. In addition to support from EQCA, it was endorsed by the California State Conference of the NAACP.

The new session of the Assembly sees three members of the Legislature’s LGBT Caucus heading key committees. Sen. Christine Kehoe has been appointed chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sen. Mark Leno will head the Senate’s Public Safety Committee, and Assemblymember John A. Perez is chairing the Assembly Democratic Caucus.

The LGBT caucus also includes freshman Assemblymember Tom Ammiano. All four are Democrats.

Police have not divulged how Milton Lindgren, 70, and Eric Hendricks, 73, were murdered, or how long their bodies had been inside the house. A police spokesperson would say only that the men died by “violent means.”

Officers were sent to the home after friends notified police that the men had not been seen for some time.

Investigators say they have not determined a motive for the slayings, but friends say they believe the men were killed because they were gay.

One friend, Patrick Beard, told WRTV that the men had been targeted by vandals, with their phone and cable lines cut twice in the past few months, and that homophobic graffiti was found on their front door.

“I firmly believe it was definitely a hate crime. Milt was 70 and his partner was 73 and to go into someone’s home and do something like that, it’s just too coincidental,” Beard told WRTV.

“I’m not a genius, but if someone’s being harassed like that and fagot gets stamped on their door on a piece of paper, it’s not that hard to connect the dots two months later that these two people are brutally killed in their home,” Beard said.

Police say only that they are investigating all possibilities.

As an 86-year-old gay man, with no family nearby and many acquaintances long since dead, he’d seem a likely prospect for isolation.

Instead, he has kindled a deep, five-year friendship with Gigi Stoll, a fashion model-turned-photographer half his age. Stoll helps Carter with medical arrangements, writes to him when she travels overseas, and sat with him for six hours during his most recent hospitalization.

“The other guys in the hospital, no one was coming in to see them,” Carter said. “To get that gift, you have to be lucky.”

It’s not just luck. Stoll came into his life though a program that matches infirm gays and lesbians with volunteers who commit to making weekly visits.

Long overlooked by society at large, and even by younger gays, elderly gays and lesbians are emerging as distinct community, getting more help and attention as they confront challenges that differ in many ways from their heterosexual counterparts.

Advocacy groups say the estimated 2.5 million gay seniors in America are twice as likely to live alone, four times less likely to have adult children to help them, and far more fearful of discrimination from health care workers.

Many fear anti-gay animosity or bias at senior centers, in nursing homes and from health care providers. Some gay elders even keep their sexual orientation secret from the home health aides who may provide their only sustained company.

A watershed moment comes this month, when the AARP – the largest advocacy group for Americans over 50 – for the first time sponsors a major national conference focused on gay and lesbian aging. It’s being organized by SAGE (Service and Advocacy for GLBT Elders), the New York-based organization which counts Carter and Stoll among its thousands of clients and volunteers.

AARP’s involvement is “a big breakthrough,” SAGE executive director Michael Adams said. “To step forward and sponsor a conference of this high profile and splash your name all over, it’s a quantum leap.”

There will be workshops on a whole array of issues: mental health care and suicide prevention, transgender seniors, rising levels of HIV/AIDS among gay men over 50, and special challenges facing elderly gays in suburbs and small towns.

“There are very particular areas that make us a more vulnerable constituency of old people,” said Amber Hollibaugh, 62, an expert on aging with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

“We tend to age alone, with no one to call on in times of need,” she said. “We don’t have a daughter to move in with us – we don’t have a kid to call when we’re admitted to the hospital because we fall and break a hip.”

Yet some of the somber dynamics are beginning to change. Today’s gay elderly do face unique problems – but they also remember the bad old days in the closet, and many celebrate the joys of gay life in the 21st century.

Logically, Garrison Phillips ought to be a lonely man.

Though still handsome and charming as he approaches 79, he is, like most gay men of his generation, childless. His partner died five years ago. His older brother has refused to speak to him for decades.

Yet the former actor emerges regularly from his fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Manhattan to engage in an array of civic activities and volunteer work. He blogs, does public speaking and lobbying for SAGE, helps out at workshops on caregiving with tips learned from assisting his mother and aunts.

Phillips and his contemporaries lived most of their lives in an era where gays feared being too open about their sexuality. Only as elders have they witnessed the activism that has drastically reduced the ranks of closeted gays and built momentum in support of same-sex marriage.

“You were forced to lie every single day of your life,” Phillips recalled. “I lied to my parents, I lied to my teachers, I lied to get into the Army. Now you don’t have to lie anymore.”

Phillips was raised in West Virginia, and served in Korea during the Korean War. He knew no other gay soldiers, and confided about being gay only to his company commander, a high school teacher.

“He respected who I was – he told me to be careful,” said Phillips, who still wears his dog tag and proudly shows the paperwork verifying his honorable discharge.

In his 40s, Phillips joined gay-rights demonstrations for the first time, and came out to his mother, who replied, “Son, what’s wrong with that?”

He acted in TV shows, on stage and in a few films, eventually supplementing that career with a job at a New York law firm, and became increasingly engaged in gay activism.

“By the ’70s, I reached a point where I didn’t stay quiet any more – I got tired and angry,” he said.

He notes that his generation of gay men was depleted by AIDS, and many of the survivors have few, if any, close relatives to offer support.

“We’re all in the same boat. Maybe there’s a nephew or niece who helps out, but that’s it,” Phillips said. “One of the great things about SAGE is that I feel I have support, because I don’t have any from my family.”

Ruth Juster is 85. She’s managed to build a family of her own – she and her longtime partner raised a daughter they adopted from Paraguay, and now they’re contemplating getting married.

Juster also keeps busy as chief organizer for SAGE’s annual women’s dance – the 25th anniversary gala will take place in late October, and she hopes for a turnout of 500.

“There are always things still left to be done,” she said at her West Village apartment. “My advice is to gather up your energy and courage, get involved and suddenly the world will feel open to you.”

A Minneapolis native, Juster came to New York in 1945, seeking fame as a journalist. She worked for a news service and for magazines, traveled abroad, and gradually shifted into a long career in market research. Her first lesbian love affair occurred in Italy, in the 1950s; the couple returned together to New York.

“Way back then, being gay or lesbian was viewed as sinful. We hid. There were raids on the bars. Society looked down on us,” she said.

“A lot of people remained under the influence of that prejudice and kept their lives secret. We have to reach these seniors and let them know life is much different now. You have to speak up.”

Back in his prime, Frank Carter danced for Earl Hines, the great jazz pianist, and other well-known musical acts. He performed in night clubs and at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, even starred on a television show in Venezuela.

Now he has a pacemaker and a slew of daily medications, but his memory and self-deprecating humor remain sharp.

In his tiny backyard patio, he shows visitors a mesmerizing scrapbook filled with photographs of himself on stage and at backstage parties, as well as dozens of portraits of the stars he accompanied or met – Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, Melba Moore among them. Artwork collected from his travels covers the walls of his apartment.

Born in Chicago in 1922, one of eight siblings, he taught himself dancing before moving to New York in 1949. “Use your heart,” he remembers his mother telling him. “Do what you want to do.”

He recalled some down times – his youthful dismay at hearing an anti-gay epithet, some of his friends contracting HIV years later. But mostly he looked back with delight and pride.

Gigi Stoll, who describes their relationship as “like family,” encourages his recollections.

“You were so bad,” she teases approvingly.

“I was terrible,” Carter replies, with a soft smile, “I had fun. People came after me. Sometimes you said yes, sometimes you said no. I could pick and choose.”

“I’ve had a tremendous life,” he added. “Not one moment do I regret.”

If some gays in their 70s and 80s have been emboldened to speak up, the noise level from the generation following them will certainly be louder.

Gay and lesbian baby boomers – sometimes called the Stonewall Generation in honor of the 1969 New York riots that launched the gay-rights movement – have been accustomed since young adulthood to being open about their sexuality and aggressive in seeking civil rights.

This means that policy makers – and the younger generation of gay-rights leaders – are likely to face ongoing pressure from gay seniors to take their priorities into account.

“The Stonewall Generation is an activist generation,” said Amber Hollibaugh. “We had to gear up to fight an epidemic (AIDS). We built the institutions to take care of our own community in the face of government refusal to do that, and we understand what it means to build an infrastructure to deal with our own aging.”

Gay activists now regard the AARP as a valuable ally on aging issues – and welcome this as a turnaround from benign neglect toward their elders in the past.

“It was clear we had to begin to pay some attention to what those different groups bring to the table,” said Percil Stanford, the AARP’s chief diversity officer.

With a membership spanning the political spectrum, the AARP generally doesn’t take stands on gay-rights issues, such as same-sex marriage. However, Stanford said same-sex partners should be afforded the same rights regarding health care decisions that straight couples have.

Financial security also is a concern – a bereaved gay or lesbian partner receives no Social Security survivor benefits. SAGE estimates that 70 percent of its clients have annual pretax incomes under $20,000, and Michael Adams says many gay boomers are notorious procrastinators – worse than straights – when it comes to long-term financial and health care planning.

Another challenge facing gay baby boomers – perhaps more so than their straight counterparts – is ageism. They perceive the celebration of youth and good looks, and the relative invisibility of older people, to be particularly pervasive in gay popular culture.

“It overvalues one stage in your life and underscores a fear of getting old – not just 70 or 80, but 40 or 50,” said Hollibaugh. “You’re terrified. You think, ‘It’s over for me.’ It creates a tendency to lie about how old we are.”

Gay boomers are apt to shake up this mind-set, Hollibaugh said. “It’s not a generation that’s going to be quiet in the face of their own community’s refusal to deal with aging.”

With the first generation of baby boomers now reaching retirement, the ranks of Americans 65 and older will swell from 12 percent of the population to 20 percent over the next 25 years. LGBT people are estimated to represent between six and eight percent of all seniors in the country ­ 2.8 million strong and growing.

For 30 years SAGE has helped LGBT seniors face the typical challenges of aging as well as the unique twists for older people whose lives and sexuality do not fit into the traditional heterosexual cookie mold. For example, the research shows that LGBT seniors are:

* twice as likely to live alone as other seniors
* half as likely to have a partner
* four times more likely to have no children to help out
* and 50 percent more likely to have no close relatives to call for help when
needed.

These challenges are compounded by the discrimination that LGBT older people too often face when attempting to take advantage of senior services. Unfortunately, the stories are legion of home care attendants haranguing LGBT seniors about their “lifestyle,” senior facilities making it clear that it’s time to get back into the closet, and more. These experiences of discrimination discourage many LGBT seniors from seeking out the services they need.

SAGE and organizations like us exist to help LGBT older people address these challenges.

For example, at SAGE we have “friendly visitors” ­ volunteers who make sure that homebound seniors have the support they need. SAGE’s volunteer caregivers program makes sure that friends, neighbors and loved ones have the resources to “be there” for an LGBT older person. From a “friendly visit” to helping a senior get an air conditioner and lugging it up the steps of a four story walk-up, we are here for our clients. From individual therapy and support to groups for grieving partners or men over 50 with HIV/AIDS, we are here.

And we work with mainstream senior providers to help them become welcoming places for LGBT older people. Our October conference, aptly entitled “It’s About Time,” will provide an opportunity for hundreds of seniors learn more about what resources exist for them and give those who provide services to seniors how to create more welcoming environments for their clients and patients.

It’s about time, indeed.

One thing is for certain – the landscape is changing fast. History tells part of the story. Current generations of LGBT seniors came of age in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, decades when LGBT people faced extraordinary hostility, rampant violence and outrageous government-sponsored bigotry. Their life experiences were shaped by these realities.

As a result, some are less open about their sexuality and have learned to “work around” discrimination rather than confronting it head-on – ­ for many years to do anything else was literally life-threatening.

By contrast, the newest generation of LGBT older people came of age during the emergence of a vibrant and powerful “gay rights” movement. Pride parades and rainbow flags have gradually overtaken police raids and bashings (though much work remains to be done). Coming out and refusing to tolerate inequality are the sine qua non of LGBT life for many of those who are now reaching their golden years.

So what will the emergence of newly empowered generations of LGBT older people mean for our community, and for an aging country and world?

While we don’t yet have all the answers to those questions, at SAGE we’re excited about the potential for a more powerful voice for LGBT older people. It will become harder and harder to keep the needs of LGBT seniors off the table.

Even the Bush Administration had to cede a little territory at the 2005 White House Conference on Aging, when SAGE was admitted as the first official LGBT delegate in the Conference’s history.

We’ll see new marketplace opportunities for LGBT older people (the slow rise of LGBT retirement communities is just one example). And we’ll see more “in your face” tactics like lawsuits. The ACLU recently filed one on behalf of several older lesbians in New Mexico who retired from their state jobs only to discover that their partners couldn¹t receive the same retirement benefits as the spouses of their heterosexual co-workers.

It’s a brave new world out there for LGBT older people. We can’t predict exactly what it will look like. But at SAGE we’re betting that we’ll be breaking down a lot of barriers as we age. So as an iconic aging screen idol once said, fasten your seatbelts!

Michael Adams is the Executive Director of SAGE. For more information, go to
www.sageusa.org

But when Gayle (a senior trans woman) got there, she was told that in order to receive treatment, she would have to re-assume her old identity: She had to become Glen if she wanted to be helped. 



Gayle did not protest. She wanted her life to be saved. But when she was taken to the Veterans Administration Hospital for follow-up care, she was forced to do the same: she was told she’d be Glen for every medical provider who worked there. 



More recently, an openly gay man who had no family or friends hanged himself in a room of a nursing home in an East Coast city; because others on his floor were made uncomfortable by his sexual orientation, the 79-year-old had been moved to a floor for patients with disabilities and dementia. The resulting stress made him too depressed to live. 



As the elderly population swells—it is expected to double from 44 million to 90 million in the next 25 years—abuses like these and the general lack of humane care for LGBT elders are becoming more and more visible. 



According to statistics from SAGE (Service and Advocacy for GLBT Elders), the senior LGBT population will multiply from 3 million to 6 or 7 million in the next 25 years, and their communities are not prepared to give them proper housing and the appropriate healthcare. Researchers and activists see a crisis looming. 



“The number of seniors could become a kind of crisis like the HIV epidemic in the next five to 10 years, and there is no structure to deal with it. They’re not ready for us,” said Amber Hollibaugh, senior strategist for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. 


Next page: The challenges LGBT seniors face

Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC)
An umbrella organization for lesbian senior organizations across the country.

Community

AARP forums:
A place for seniors to talk about partnerships and gay marriages

Classic Dykes:
Website for over 50s lesbians

Gray and Gay
A virtual community for gay seniors

Gay health and medical providers
www.gayhealth.com
A directory of gay-friendly medical providers across the U.S.

Sage
Services to the GLBT elderly in NYC – plus a directory of providers across the U.S. Their fourth annual conference is Oct. 12-14, 2008 in New York City.

Research and information:

Ageline:
Academic research on LGBT aging issues

American Society on Aging/ LGBT Aging Issues Network

Retirement and assisted living:

Rainbow Vista
One of the first retirement communities for GLBTs

Gay Retirement Communities
Links to gay retirement communities in the U.A.

Senior Decision

seniorDECISION rates and reviews nursing homes, assisted living, retirement communities, and home health care agencies.

Transgender Aging Issues

www.forge-forward.org/TAN
Connects researchers with providers, and provides information on trans aging issues.