The Washington Blade

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Revolutionizing retirement: How LGBTQ+ housing communities empower elders to live authentically

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David Kilmnick knew an LGBTQ+ retirement community was needed when reaching out to elder facilities for educational programs.

The founder and president of the LGBT Network on Long Island, New York, he recalls a facility telling him “we have none of those here,” referring to LGBTQ+ people.

“I’m not talking this was 50 years ago or 20 years ago,” he says. “This was like five years ago.”

In September 2021, Kilmnick and his nonprofit opened the doors to The LGBT Network’s LGBT/LGBT Friendly Senior Housing, a 75-unit affordable housing community for LGBTQ+ elders. Here, residents can live out and proud with their partners and participate in programming at the 8,000-square-foot community center.

It’s a part of a growing response to the needs of the community, one where many grew up closeted and discriminated against, but also to see positive changes like marriage equality and a more welcoming society.

“It’s incumbent on us in the LGBT social service field to make sure that we create these safe and inclusive housing facilities so LGBTQ seniors and elders could age gracefully and be out and proud,” Kilmnick says.

The Palms of Manasota on the Gulf Coast of Florida touts itself as the first LGBTQ+ retirement community in the nation, while the Triangle Square Apartments in Los Angeles is considered the first affordable housing facility for elder LGBTQ+ people.

This community has the same needs as anyone else in their age group, but they also face discrimination and stigma, as well as being less likely to have children or grandchildren who can visit and help.

AARP has a page dedicated to the older LGBTQ+ community here. Additionally, they offer many online tools for all older adults like a retirement calculator that can help determine how much someone needs to be saving; a social security calculator; and a resource hub for all things Medicare.

With the rise of these specialized communities, they are able to age in place in a safe environment and also have access to services they need.

“It’s really the first generation of LGBTQ+ folks who are for the majority living their lives at some level of outness,” says Sherrill Wayland, the senior director of special initiatives and partnerships at SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ elders. “As we think about retiring, potentially looking for retirement communities or assisted living, we want to make sure that we can continue being our authentic self and not have to re-closet.”

In partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, SAGE created the long-term care equality index (LEI). Hearing from 200 communities in 43 states, they surveyed non-discrimination and staff training, resident services and support, employee benefits and policies, resident and community engagement. The findings help elders as they research communities to spend their golden years, and each year the groups hope more communities will participate.

“We’re really encouraging these systems to not just raise a rainbow flag using Pride Month, but looking at the policies, participants and procedures that really institutionalize what it means to be LGTQ+ welcoming and supportive,” Wayland says.

Sandra Newson is the vice president of resident services for Carrfour, a nonprofit affordable housing developer. One of their properties is The Residences at Equality Park in Wilton Manors, an LGBTQ+ community that opened in 2021 and shares a campus with The Pride Center.

“LGBT senior communities are very rare,” she says. “One of the challenges for a person who identifies as LGBTQ+ who is aging is feeling a sense of belonging and comfort in a traditional aging-in-place for a 55+ community is oftentimes faced with discrimination or hostility.”

Even the language in the application form might be a sign to an applicant that they are not welcoming, particularly to transgender or nonbinary people or same-sex couples who want to live together. At The Residences, Newson says they’ve created an affirming environment with “zero tolerance for any behaviors that make someone feel less than part of the community,” from the application process to signage in the buildings, the groups they partner with and staff training.

You shouldn’t have to go back into the closet to feel safeSandra Newson

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One of the most popular programs is a monthly meditation workshop with Sunshine Cathedral, an LGBTQ+-affirming church that also hosts grief sessions when a resident passes away. Other activities include movie screenings, holiday parties and weekly gatherings. With many of their residents experiencing chronic illness — including HIV, mental health issues and disabilities —  due to a lack of access to health care in the past, counselors help connect them to community resources.

“You shouldn’t have to go back into the closet to feel safe,” Newson says.

The same model is in place at the LGBT Network. Kilmnick says that in traditional retirement homes, “there’s a lack or the LGBTQ community is completely invisible.”

In one focus group before opening, a woman shared that when she lost her partner of more than 30 years, she attended a bereavement group where other widows and widowers told her “that’s not the same thing.”

 That does not happen at the LGBT Network. There, residents are treated to guest speakers, drag Bingo, health programs, holiday celebrations, and other diverse programming where they can be themselves alongside their partners.

“We’ve had a number of seniors tell us that this is the first place that they ever lived in their entire life —they’re in their mid-60s, mid-70s — this is the first time ever in their entire life that they have felt they lived in a safe place where they could be themselves,” Kilmnick says. “That’s powerful. It’s so sad and so powerful, and yet it really just stresses the importance of these facilities and that we need more of them.

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Activist, organizer, author Amber Hollibaugh dies at 77

Amber Hollibaugh, an activist, organizer, author of “My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home” and a self-educated leading public intellectual in the LGBTQ, feminist, sexual liberation and economic justice movements, died suddenly of complications of diabetes in her home in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Oct. 20. She was 77.

Hollibaugh is she is survived by her life partner, award-winning novelist Jenifer Levin, and stepsons Mak Levin and Van De Laurier.

Hollibaugh was born in Bakersfield, Calif., on June 20, 1946. She lived in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Mississippi, Chicago and Canada before she moved to New York in 1981.

“Amber loved life with an embodied passion. She brought that passion to seek justice in the world for us in a way that was unwilling to leave any of our complicated selves behind. Amber’s work for lesbians living with HIV, poor and working-class queer folks and older LGBTQ+ members of our community was groundbreaking and sometimes left Amber not appreciated in the very movements that she was trying to move towards more liberation,” said Beth Zemsky, a former co-chair of the National LGBTQ+ Task Force and the former director of the University of Minnesota’s LGBT Programs Office. “Amber was a fierce friend, somebody you could count on to see you fully and show up for you. I’m grateful to have been able to look into her dazzling blue eyes and see the best of who we could be.” 

Barbara Satin, a Task Force faith consultant, also mourned Hollibaugh.

“My early activism had focused on trans inclusion plus the affirmation of queer folks within faith settings — then I met Amber who introduced me to the beautiful, old LGBT community — my peer group. These pioneers, on whose shoulders we have built a burgeoning progressive movement, had hopes, expectations, fears and concerns around aging that were seriously overlooked by the broader community,” said Stein. “Through her work on LGBTQ aging at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, including the publication of ‘Outing Age,’ the seminal work on the issue, Amber spotlighted the needs and expectations that our elders had and offered practical and appropriate responses to their difficult situations. Amber added an important element to my activism and the applause I have received over the years for my work on aging are directly connected to her influence on my life. As I approach my 90th birthday, Amber Hollibaugh still is my role model for doing activism with grace and style.

Another remembrance notes Hollibaugh’s legacy “is an integral part of the history of the modern LGBTQ+ and feminist movements.” 

“Her contributions were always visionary, as she worked at the intersections of sexual and economic inequality, LGBTQ and women’s health disparities,” it reads. “Her legacy and long-term impact in progressive movements is inestimable, and her loss will be widely and deeply mourned throughout queer communities and beyond.”

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‘Queer’ evolves from hateful epithet to expression of pride

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It hit me one morning this fall as I woke up: I’ve turned 70.

As I’ve been celebrating this milestone, I’ve marveled at the changes that have occurred for our LGBTQ community during my lifetime.

Marriage equality, Pete Buttigieg (or any LGBTQ person) running for president and/or the fab queer rom-com “Bros” would have been unimaginable when I began coming out 50 years ago.

Then, just three years after the Stonewall uprising, I and many other LGBTQ folk felt far more shame than pride about our queerness.

Most of us in that era wouldn’t have dreamed that, decades later, not only LGBTQ teens, but queer people our age would have marched, out and proud, in Pride parades. We’d never have thought that in the 21st century any of us would ever proudly say, shout or chant “we’re queer!”

Nothing is more emblematic to me of the progress made in LGBTQ rights from Stonewall to today than the evolution of the word “queer” from a hateful epithet to an expression of pride.

Today, the term “queer” can be found everywhere from news outlets (including NPR, the Blade, the New York Times and the Washington Post) to museum exhibits such as “Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer” at the Schwules Museum Berlin through the end of January and “Queer Creativity Through the Ages: Artwork from the Center on Colfax Open Art Studio” at the Denver Art Museum through Dec. 31.

I can’t think of any of my under 60 friends, hetero or LGBTQ who don’t use the word “queer.” Sometimes they’re proudly writing it on Pride parade signs. Often, they use it as a neutral adjective. The way you’d say “they’re from Boston” or “he’s about six-feet tall.”

Many of my over-60 pals are beginning to use the word “queer.” If they’re not comfortable using it about themselves, they’re increasingly comfortable with others using it. My 70-something hetero cousins, who are LGBTQ allies, no longer feel I’m putting myself down when I say I’m queer.

Given that “queer” is so often used as an affirmation of identity or neutral descriptor, I was surprised when New York Times columnist Pamela Paul recently lamented the popularity of the “q-word.”

I’m an avid reader of Paul’s column. Paul, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, is, like many writers, obsessed about language. She’s an astute observer of the culture and of how we use words.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder what Paul was thinking. “Language is always changing – but it shouldn’t become inflexible,” she wrote, “especially when new terminologies, in the name of inclusion, sometimes wind up making others feel excluded.”

Paul, who is hetero, worried that the widespread use of “queer” excludes LGBTQ people who don’t identify as queer. She was upset that so many Gen-Zers identify as queer, and annoyed that “gays and lesbians can feel crowded out” under the LGBTQ umbrella.

Paul chided new Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson for using the word “queer,” and not saying the words “gay,” “lesbian” or “bisexual” in a video where she introduced herself.

People at HRC do say “gay,” “lesbian” “bisexual” “transgender” and “nonbinary,” Robinson wrote in response to Paul’s column in a letter to the Times.

“I identify as a Black queer woman,” Robinson wrote, “and when I say ‘queer,’ it’s to be as inclusive as possible, to re-center those at the margins, to embrace our differences and to embrace our power, too.”

Robinson nailed what attracts so many of us to the word “queer.”

Of course, many LGBTQ boomers and Gen-Xers vividly recall when “queer” was a homophobic slur.

A hetero friend remembers when she was seven riding on a school bus. “I was mad at a kid,” she told me, “I wanted to call him something mean. So I said he was ‘queer.’”

“My sister told me not to say that again,” my pal added, “She said it was too horrible to tell me what it meant.”

But in recent decades (starting with AIDS activists), we’ve reclaimed the word “queer.” We’ve taken away its sting: transformed it from a hate-mongering, othering slur to a source of power.
It’s hard to think of a more inclusive word than queer. It includes and values all LGBTQ folk. In the wake of the Colorado Springs LGBTQ club shooting, it’s more important than ever to be proudly queer.

Kathi Wolfe, a writer and a poet, is a regular contributor to the Blade.

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Lambda Legal sues Oklahoma over transgender birth certificate policy

Lambda Legal joined by Tulsa attorney Karen Keith Wilkens filed a lawsuit challenging Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt’s executive order prohibiting transgender people born in Oklahoma from correcting the gender marker on their birth certificates to match their gender identity.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, states that On November 8, 2021, Governor Stitt issued an executive order that reversed the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH)’s prior practice of allowing transgender people to correct their birth certificates to match their gender identity.

Previously, transgender people could correct their birth certificates by presenting a court order to OSDH, but following the executive order, OSDH has refused to comply with such orders.

“Gov. Stitt’s executive order deprives transgender people born in Oklahoma of equal treatment under the law. Other people have access to birth certificates that match who they are, but the government has singled out transgender people to take away their ability to access birth certificates that match who they are,” Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Shelly Skeen said. “Inaccurate identity documents rob transgender people of control over their privacy by involuntarily ‘outing’ them to others. 

“Oklahoma’s policy wrongfully exposes transgender people to discrimination and harm when accessing housing, employment, education, healthcare, and public accommodations. Transgender people have the right, like everyone else, to keep their private matters private and to be treated equally in society, as who they are, without fear of discrimination,” Skeen said.

Attorney and Tyron Garner Fellow Nicholas Guillory, who is also working on the case, said: “In Oklahoma, 25% of transgender people live in poverty.  Having accurate birth certificates that match who they are is critically important to combat the barriers and inequities they face in their daily lives.”

Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, on behalf of a transgender woman, Rowan Fowler, and two transgender men, Allister Hall and a plaintiff proceeding anonymously, C.R.

In the lawsuit, Fowler et al. v. Stitt et al., Lambda Legal argues that denying transgender people the ability to obtain accurate birth certificates subjects them to discrimination, deprives them of their dignity and invades their rights to privacy in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit also argues that forcing transgender people to identify with a gender that does not align with their gender identity violates their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“Having a birth certificate that reflects who I am as a human being is crucial and can present a basic issue of safety for me,” said plaintiff Rowan Fowler, who is a transgender woman. “The state’s denial of my existence is discriminatory and puts me in harm’s way. There was no reason for Oklahoma to take away this basic tool that transgender people need to simply go about their everyday lives with dignity, safety, and respect.”

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, almost one-third of transgender individuals who showed an identity document with a name or gender marker that conflicted with their perceived gender were harassed, denied benefits and services, discriminated against or assaulted.  At least 47 states have systems in place that allow transgender people to correct their birth certificates to match their gender identity.

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Va. school district to pay $1.3 million in legal fees to resolve Gavin Grimm case

A Virginia school district will pay more than $1.3 million in legal fees to resolve the case of Gavin Grimm, former high school student who challenged its bathroom policy.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday announced in a press release the Gloucester County School Board in a court filing said it would not challenge Grimm’s request to pay the fees and other costs associated with his case.

Grimm was a sophomore at Gloucester County High School in 2015 when he filed a federal lawsuit against the Gloucester County School District’s policy that prohibited students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that did not correspond with their “biological gender.”

Lower courts ruled the policy violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The U.S. Supreme Court in June declined to consider the case. 

“Rather than allow a child equal access to a safe school environment, the Gloucester School Board decided to fight this child for five years in a costly legal battle that they lost,” said Grimm in the ACLU press release. “I hope that this outcome sends a strong message to other school systems, that discrimination is an expensive losing battle.”