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Gay seniors have a place of their own
Ohio
News
January
5, 2004
CLEVELAND
- At 71, Ray Leuenberger finally found a senior center where he feels
comfortable talking about his male partner of 10 years.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Senior Center is important for a
generation of gays and lesbians who lived through years of discrimination,
said Ron Hill, executive director of the Western Reserve Area Agency on
Aging.
Hill said gay and lesbian seniors do not usually go to centers and are
reluctant to seek services they need.
"The fact that they're aging already puts them at risk for social
isolation and greater chronic health problems," Hill said.
"That's compounded by the fact that they're members of an oppressed
group."
Cleveland
has gay groups that include seniors, and some gay seniors groups meet
socially, but the center provides the only free daytime space solely for
homosexuals.
"This is a place where we can go, and it gives us a chance to be with
other people who are gay and lesbian," Leuenberger said. "We
weren't getting out into the community before."
The senior center convenes Wednesdays and Fridays at the
Lesbian
Gay
Community Center
in
Cleveland
. It should move into its own space next door early this year, said Jack
Hart, interim co-executive director.
Life is a little easier for younger gay people, Hart said.
"But people who came out in the '40s and '50s come from a different
era entirely," he said. Many states had laws against homosexuality.
Kay, 66, who didn't want her last name used, had never been to a senior
center until she visited this one.
"I don't know too many elderly who are gay," she said. Her
partner of 31 years died a year ago. "It's good for me to get
out," she said.
Eventually, Hart would like to offer classes and other activities for
seniors, training sessions for providers and a staff member dedicated to
the senior center.
Nationwide, as many as 3 million seniors are gay or lesbian, surveys show.
Similar centers will follow elsewhere, said Amber Hollibaugh, advocacy
director for Seniors Aging in a Gay Environment, a national group based in
New York City
.
"If you combine the gay rights movement with the baby boomer
demographics, what you get is an openly lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender
aging population," she said. "That provides pressure to create a
whole variety of different.
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