03/24/2013
Frank Lapiana is 70. He came out as gay in his late teens and said he considers himself lucky as his family came to terms with his sexual orientation and choice in partners. Two of the three friends who came out with him and served as his support system have now passed away, and he has lost touch with the third.
But on a Thursday morning mid-March at Newbury Street's Café Emmanuel, he laughed as he spoke about the funny twists life can take. His first boyfriend, the partner he exchanged high school rings with, was having lunch one room over.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elders have a much higher rate of aging alone than their heterosexual peers, but Massachusetts is leading the fight to change that.
Roughly half a decade ago, without family to move in with or a generous nest egg to pay for private care, nursing homes were often the only option aging people could reasonably expect. In 1965 the Older Americans Act came along, with its a network of social services. America’s elderly could age in their own homes, in their own communities, as long as humanly possible.
With one exception.
“When you’re looking at populations that are really marginalized, like this particular population of LGBT elders, if you think about the time they were coming of age, it was not ok to be gay at all,” said LGBT Aging Project Assistant Director Bob Linscott.
There was a real danger to being out and in the open with your sexual orientation 50 or 60 years ago, Linscott said. People stood a real chance of losing their job, their housing, custody of their children if they had any, even their lives.
People dealt with it. Some flew completely under the radar, too terrified to speak up. Others, Linscott said, “had fabulous lives…out in New York, San Francisco, the stories they tell are incredible.”
“But then suddenly, when they become old and they become frail, and they’re starting to need a little bit more support, the reality of aging is catching up with them,” Linscott said. “Then everything changes again for them, because they think oh my God, what if the people that are providing care do not accept me, or discriminate or harm me. So they deny all these services, they age in their homes and they will not come in for help.”
Ken Mendoza is a gay retired college librarian. He’s come to realize, he said, that as you get older, it’s easier to want to stay in the house. He worries about his future, considering both his parents ended up with Alzheimer’s and dementia. He doesn’t have a partner and, while he can’t be certain he will follow in his parents footsteps, he said he thinks about it.
Nowadays, most Thursdays Mendoza can be found at Café Emmanuel, the very first LGBT-friendly federally funded congregate meal site.
Run out of Emmanuel Church on Boston’s Newbury Street, the weekly event was developed through a partnership between Ethos, a main stream elder service provider and The LGBT Aging Project, a non profit dedicated to working with main stream elder service providers to make them more welcoming and inclusive for LGBT elders.
“There are gay and lesbian elders in other states with their faces pressed against Massachusetts, looking in, because we have nine of these meal programs,” Linscott said.
“There are maybe three other states that have maybe one in the whole country.”
The event was first started under the Bush administration, a fact that brings Linscott no little amusement, and offers LGBT seniors a hot meal along with music programming every other week. Students from some of Boston’s finest conservatories perform a variety of jazz, classical and even opera music. Some are straight, some gay.
Lapiana, who came out to his family and friends in the late ‘50s, said it never ceases to surprise him how open and comfortable with themselves young people are.
“I’m amazed at the federal funding that supports a lot of these organizations for the rest of the elderly LGBT community and the fact that it’s so easy to be out,” he said. “I’m just blown away by how time has changed since I was a kid, where I had to be closeted and afraid to tell my friends my sexual orientation, putting on a show for both friends, family, employers.”
Café Emmanuel is open to all LGBT seniors, but the luncheon’s attendees are mostly gay men. At most, there are one or two women on average. Linscott said he wondered why this was when he first started the event.
“Because we live in a society of such gender inequality and the per dollar amount that a man makes is so much more than a woman, when women don’t have the men’s pensions or salaries, they work much longer,” Linscott explained. “The majority of these folks are all retired. Women of the same age are working fulltime, so they can’t be here at this time.”
Six years ago, Ethos and the LGBT Aging Project developed Out to Brunch, offered every first Saturday of the month in Roslindale. Geared toward LBT women and their friends, the event enjoys the same success as Café Emmanuel.
Michael, who asked to be known by his first name only, said that seeing people active, out and enjoying each other’s company is “very uplifting and…encouraging.”
“I’ve come to know a couple of hundred people, easily, that I can say hi to,” Lapiana said. “It doesn’t have to be serious conversations. It’s just feeling light, love, accepted, and these little hugs that we give each other, a kiss, it just brightens your day. All is good.”
