MPR’s Sanden Totten reports that while legalized gay marriage is a topic of some states, many in the gay and lesbian community have another issue on their mind - what to do when they get old.
Aging groups estimate that by 2030, the number of gays and lesbians aged 65 and up could reach 4.7 million in the U.S. For many of them, entering a retirement community or a nursing home can mean dealing with discrimination. Activists in the Twin Cites are hoping to change that.
SANDEN TOTTEN: It's late afternoon on one of those perfect Minnesota spring days. But instead of lounging outside, dozens of people in a Columbia Heights theater are watching Ten More Good Years, a documentary about aging in the gay community. In it, one gay senior worries about where he'll go when he can no longer live on his own.
SPEAKER 1: I'm having second thoughts. I shake my head more and more at going into a straight retirement. I shook my head more and more. I feel that that wouldn't be where I would feel most comfortable. I, like--
SANDEN TOTTEN: The audience, is willing to spend a lovely afternoon inside a dark room because, for many, this story of aging and discrimination hits close to home.
BRUCE FISHER: Yeah, it's a little bit of a fear.
SANDEN TOTTEN: That's Bruce Fisher. He's 59 years old and openly gay.
BRUCE FISHER: I would like to believe it happened more in the past than it will happen in the future. But I have some anxieties about the aging issue, and that's one of them.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Fisher and other members of the Twin Cities gay and lesbian community mill about the lobby after the show. Many are in their 50s and 60s. They're part of the generation that came of age during the early '70s when the gay rights movement first began, a generation that lived publicly out of the closet. But some, like Ann Phibbs, worried that going into long-term care may change that.
ANN PHIBBS: I mean, I came out when I was 18 years old, and now I'm 46. When you start to think about living the vast majority of your life out and not closeted, the idea of becoming closeted in your later years of your life becomes really depressing. It just seems like really counter to what we're fighting for, really.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Phibbs isn't alone in her fears. A 2002 Twin Cities metro area study found that 90% of older gays and lesbians believed they wouldn't be treated sensitively by senior social services. But in a corner of the lobby, a display on a table aims to change that. The table is covered in brochures and propped up behind it is a drawing of an idyllic-looking condominium. In front of it stands Kathy Wetzel-Mastel.
KATHY WETZEL-MASTEL: The project is a limited equity co-op being geared toward the aging GLBT community.
SANDEN TOTTEN: That stands for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered. Wetzel-Mastel works with the Powderhorn Residents Group, a nonprofit launching the spirit on Lake Housing Cooperative. It's a 41-unit building designed for older GLBT people. When built, it will be one of only a handful of such homes in the country. Wetzel-Mastel says this community needs this project.
KATHY WETZEL-MASTEL: The thing that has always resonated the most with me is the statistics about the percentage of folks in the GLBT community that are likely to age alone without the traditional network of support. And, to me, it seems like a perfect way to address that.
SANDEN TOTTEN: GLBT advocates point to a host of concerns that typical long-term care facilities don't address, such as negative views from other residents or even staff, or who has the right to make a health care decision when they become ill. Without official marriages, many gays and lesbians have no legal say in how their partner is treated. A survey of agencies representing hundreds of long-term care providers in Minnesota revealed that, for most of them, this population isn't even on the radar yet.
BARBARA SATIN: When we deal with senior care providers, many of them will say, well, we don't have any GLBT people in our clientele, and we say, yeah, you do. You just don't know it. And you just aren't providing them the opportunity to come out.
SANDEN TOTTEN: That's Barbara Satin. She's transgendered. She was born as a man, but chooses to live her life as a woman. Satin works with a group called GLBT Generations. They help long-term care facilities think about how to care for people like Satin. Right now, they're designing a GLBT sensitivity training program for area nursing homes.
BARBARA SATIN: We want them to understand the lives of the people they are going to be caring about also the history that they've had to live through so that they understand the reticence and the expectation that they have of expecting to be treated badly. It's going to be an issue that care providers are going to have to struggle with.
SANDEN TOTTEN: Satin has a selfish reason for her work. She's 75 years old. She says she's already booked a room for herself in the Spirit on Lake Housing Co-op.
BARBARA SATIN: I have the number one reservation.
SANDEN TOTTEN: But that project has stalled. The plan was to break ground this summer, but the economic slowdown has delayed that until 2010 or later. In the meantime, folks like Satin hope long-term care facilities can become more welcoming. Sanden Totten, Minnesota Public Radio news, Columbia Heights.
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