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SPECIAL REPORT: ‘You can’t let adversity get you down’

Many LGBT elders struggling with economic insecurity

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Cedric Burgess, poverty, gay news, Washington Blade
Cedric Burgess, poverty, gay news, Washington Blade

Cedric Burgess says he lives ‘check to check’ while relying on government assistance to pay bills. Despite his struggles, he works to give back to the LGBT community. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part look at how poverty affects elder members of the LGBT community and part of a yearlong Blade focus on poverty. To share your ideas or personal story, visit us on Facebook or email [email protected]. Click here to read previous installments.

 

“I did my dirt,” said Cedric Burgess, a black gay man and longtime Washington, D.C. resident who grew up in the District. “I was young and full of fun!”

Today, Burgess, 61, is a recovering alcoholic who suffers from depression. He’s been HIV positive for more than 30 years. “I live from check to check,” said Burgess, who receives Social Security disability benefits.

Before undergoing a hip replacement four years ago, he struggled to walk up to his second-story apartment.

“It is a wonder to be able to walk without my cane,” Burgess said. “No matter what pain pills I took, I couldn’t get to sleep. You don’t realize how much pain you’re in. You adapt. I couldn’t cross my legs. Steps weren’t an option.”

At 19, Burgess came out to his family.

“I was accepted by my family. I was taken in,” he said, “that was a blessing!”

For some years, he worked in a series of clerical jobs. In 1982, Burgess, then living and working as an administrative assistant in Atlanta, was hit by a drunk driver. The accident left him with back pain, nerve damage and sciatica. For two years, unable to work, he did physical therapy. In 1984, Burgess returned to work. After returning to D.C., he went back to doing clerical work.

During the AIDS epidemic, his family confronted Burgess.

“They said ‘you gotta get tested,’” he said. “In 1991, after I found out I was positive, I took a two-week vacation. I got HIV through a blood transfusion I received when I had my accident.  They weren’t screening transfusions for HIV then.”

In 2006, his back pain became so severe that Burgess left the workforce. He said he retired from the Green Door, a D.C. organization that helps people with mental challenges, where he worked as a program assistant.

“You can’t let adversity get you down, you have to have a positive attitude,” Burgess added.  Fortunately, he said, social safety net programs help him to make ends meet. In addition to his monthly disability check, Burgess receives food stamps. His health care is covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

“I receive energy assistance from Pepco and two-thirds of my rent, with funding from the Ryan White Act, is subsidized by the Washington, D.C. Housing Coalition,” Burgess said.

These programs are a lifeline for him. “Without the rental assistance and the Medicare and Medicaid, I wouldn’t be able to afford housing and health care,” Burgess said. “I couldn’t pay for my HIV medications and I couldn’t have had my hip replacement.”

Cedric Burgess, poverty, gay news, Washington Blade

Cedric Burgess says many elders don’t know their legal rights when it comes to housing and other issues. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Despite living with economic hardship, Burgess leads an active and full life. Committed to helping others, he has volunteered for groups serving everyone from homeless youth to elders.  “I’m a goodwill ambassador for the DC Center for the LGBT Community and for AARP,” Burgess said. “I help seniors learn about their rights in housing and in nursing homes. Many seniors don’t know their rights.”

“I believe in God’s healing,” he went on, “I go to church. I have no prejudice against any other religion. I’m a spiritually free person.”

Burgess’s situation is far from unique. Many LGBT older adults (aging Baby Boomers over 50) live with economic insecurity.

“Media and marketing stereotypes view the LGBT community as an affluent niche group filled with couples with double incomes,” said Matthew J. Corso, chief communications officer and board member of the DC Center for the LGBT Community. “The poverty rate among LGBT older adults is much higher than people would think from the marketing view. Older adults can often feel isolated.”

The DC Center’s Coffee and Conversation is a safe space where older adults can connect with others in the community and discuss issues related to living with economic insecurity, Corso said.

People rarely look at economic insecurity and aging, said Robert Espinoza, senior director of public policy and communications for Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE), “People studying poverty don’t look often enough at poverty among LGBT and older people.  On the other side, people studying LGBT issues aren’t looking often enough at aging and poverty.”

But studies that have been done show that poverty is high among elders and even higher among LGBT older adults, Espinoza said. Among the findings:

• One in six Americans aged 65 and older lives in poverty, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.

• The poverty rate is as high or higher among lesbian, gay and bisexual people than for heterosexual people, and lesbian couples, 65 and older, are twice as likely to be poor as straight married couples, according to a 2009 Williams Institute Report.

• There are an estimated 1.5 million gay, lesbian and bisexual elders in the United States today. The number is expected to increase to nearly 3 million by 2030, according to “Improving the Lives of LGBT Older Adults” from SAGE, the Movement Advancement Program (MAP) and Center for American Progress.

• Because historically LGBT people have not been able to marry, many LGBT older adults face the economic insecurity and health issues that come with aging without the support from families that heterosexual older adults often receive. LGBT elders are twice as likely to be single and three to four times more likely to be without children as their straight peers, according to the MAP report.

• Transgender adults encounter profound discrimination, according to a SAGE and National Center for Transgender Equality 2012 report. They experience “striking disparities in … health care access … employment and more,” the report states, “with a growing older transgender population, there is an urgent need to understand the challenges that can threaten financial security, health and overall well-being.”

Several factors contribute to poverty among LGBT elders. “In the past, many faced employment discrimination because they were LGBT. LGBT people of color and lesbians faced even more severe discrimination,” Espinoza said. “Too many LGBT older adults have little, if any, retirement savings.”

• LGBT older adults face health disparities and 47 percent of LGBT people over 50 have a disability, said Imani Woody, Ph.D., chair of SAGE Metro D.C. “More than one in 10 LGBT people aged 50-plus have been denied health care or provided with inferior health care,” she said. “This can lead to economic insecurity, which can translate to poverty. If you don’t have access to health care, what do you have?”

Even older LGBT adults with moderate incomes, who wouldn’t think of themselves as facing poverty, can become impoverished if they become disabled or need long-term care, Espinoza said. “If you only have savings of, say, $60,000, it will go quickly.”

Lack of affordable housing and housing discrimination are key reasons why many LGBT older adults live in or near poverty. Same-sex older couples encounter discrimination when seeking housing in senior living facilities, according to a report, “Opening Doors: An Investigation of Barriers to Senior Housing for Same-Sex couples,” released last month by the Equal Rights Center, a civil rights organization in partnership with SAGE.

“We saw a number of adverse treatments with a high economic impact,” said Don Kahl, executive director, Equal Rights Center. “Sometimes they were charged for having an ‘extra person.’ At other times, they were told they’d have to take a more expensive two-bedroom apartment when they wanted a one-bedroom,” he said, “In other cases, they were treated in such a manner, that they wouldn’t accept the housing even if it was offered.”

It’s a misperception to think that as people age, they accumulate wealth and live out their days in comfort, said Peter Johnson, director of public relations for the Center on Halsted in Chicago. “It’s even more true for LGBT older adults. Before we began to experience marriage equality, LGBT seniors might have shared finances unevenly with their partners,” he said. “Without marriage, if one partner dies or the relationship ends, a huge financial burden is placed on the remaining partner.”

The Center on Halsted is working with the Heartland Alliance to provide LGBT older adults with affordable housing in the LakeView neighborhood of Chicago. “While not exclusively LGBT it will be LGBT focused and friendly,” Johnson said. “It will be 79 units of subsidized housing with the rent being no more than one-third of residents’ income.”

LGBT elders live in or near poverty nationwide — from rural to metropolitan areas, Johnson said. “We are fortunate to have Heartland [Alliance] dealing with us on these issues.”

      Next week: Meet elder members of the LGBT community coping with unemployment and economic insecurity.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court declines to hear case over drag show at Texas university

Students argue First Amendment protects performance

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The U.S. Supreme Court justices on June 30, 2022. ((Photo by Fred Schilling of the U.S. Supreme Court)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a First Amendment case over a public university president’s refusal to allow an LGBTQ student group to host a drag show on campus.

The group’s application was denied without the justices providing their reasoning or issuing dissenting opinions, as is custom for such requests for emergency review.

When plaintiffs sought to organize the drag performance to raise money for suicide prevention in March 2023, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler cancelled the event, citing the Bible and other religious texts.

The students sued, arguing the move constituted prior restraint and viewpoint-based discrimination, in violation of the First Amendment. Wendler had called drag shows “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny,” adding that “a harmless drag show” was “not possible.”

The notoriously conservative Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who former President Donald Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ruled against the plaintiffs in September, writing that “it is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive.”

Kacsmaryk further argued that the High Court’s precedent-setting opinions protecting stage performances and establishing that “speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend” was inconsistent with constitutional interpretation based on “text, history and tradition.”

Plaintiffs appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is by far the most conservative of the nation’s 12 appellate circuit courts. They sought emergency review by the Supreme Court because the 5th Circuit refused to fast-track their case, so arguments were scheduled to begin after the date of their drag show.

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Federal Government

EXCLUSIVE: USAID LGBTQ coordinator visits Uganda

Jay Gilliam met with activists, community members from Feb. 19-27

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U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam (Photo courtesy of USAID)

U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam last month traveled to Uganda.

Gilliam was in the country from Feb. 19-27. He visited Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and the nearby city of Jinja.

Gilliam met with LGBTQ activists who discussed the impact of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, a law with a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality” that President Yoweri Museveni signed last May. Gilliam also sat down with USAID staffers.

Gilliam on Wednesday during an exclusive interview with the Washington Blade did not identify the specific activists and organizations with whom he met “out of protection.” 

“I really wanted to meet with community members and understand the impacts on them,” he said.

Consensual same-sex sexual relations in Uganda were already criminalized before Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Gilliam told the Blade he spoke with a person who said authorities arrested them at a community meeting for mental health and psychosocial support “under false pretenses of engaging in same-sex relations and caught in a video that purportedly showed him.” 

The person, according to Gilliam, said authorities outed them and drove them around the town in which they were arrested in order to humiliate them. Gilliam told the Blade that prisoners and guards beat them, subjected them to so-called anal exams and denied them access to antiretroviral drugs.

“They were told that you are not even a human being. From here on you are no longer living, just dead,” recalled Gilliam.

“I just can’t imagine how difficult it is for someone to be able to live through something like that and being released and having ongoing needs for personal security, having to be relocated and getting support for that and lots of other personal issues and trauma,” added Gilliam.

Gilliam said activists shared stories of landlords and hotel owners evicting LGBTQ people and advocacy groups from their properties. Gilliam told the Blade they “purport that they don’t want to run afoul of” the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

“These evictions really exacerbate the needs from the community in terms of relocation and temporary shelter and just the trauma of being kicked out of your home, being kicked out of your village and having to find a place to stay at a moment’s notice, knowing that you’re also trying to escape harm and harassment from neighbors and community members,” he said.

Gilliam also noted the Anti-Homosexuality Act has impacted community members in different ways.

Reported cases of violence and eviction, for example, are higher among gay men and transgender women. Gilliam noted lesbian, bisexual and queer women and trans men face intimate partner violence, are forced into marriages, endure corrective rape and lose custody of their children when they are outed. He said these community members are also unable to inherit land, cannot control their own finances and face employment discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  

US sanctioned Ugandan officials over Anti-Homosexuality Act

The U.S imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan officials shortly after Museveni signed the law. The World Bank Group later announced the suspension of new loans to Uganda.

The Biden-Harris administration last October issued a business advisory that said the Anti-Homosexuality Act “further increases restrictions on human rights, to include restrictions on freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly and exacerbates issues regarding the respect for leases and employment contracts.” The White House has also removed Uganda from a program that allows sub-Saharan African countries to trade duty-free with the U.S. and has issued a business advisory for the country over the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Dec. 4, 2023, announced sanctions against current and former Ugandan officials who committed human rights abuses against LGBTQ people and other groups. Media reports this week indicate the U.S. denied MP Sarah Achieng Opendi a visa that would have allowed her to travel to New York in order to attend the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.

Museveni, for his part, has criticized the U.S. and other Western countries’ response to the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Gilliam noted authorities have arrested and charged Ugandans under the law. 

Two men on motorcycles on Jan. 3 stabbed Steven Kabuye, co-executive director of Coloured Voice Truth to LGBTQ Uganda, outside his home while he was going to work. The incident took place months after Museveni attended Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast at which U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) spoke and defended the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

The State Department condemned the attack that Kabuye blamed on politicians and religious leaders who are stoking anti-LGBTQ sentiments in Uganda. Gilliam did not meet with Ugandan government officials while he was in the country.

“We in the U.S. government have already made it clear our stance with government officials on how we feel about the AHA, as well as broader human rights concerns in country,” said Gilliam. “That’s been communicated from the very highest levels.”

The Uganda’s Constitutional Court last Dec. 18 heard arguments in a lawsuit that challenges the Anti-Homosexuality Act. It is unclear when a ruling in the case will take place, but Gilliam said LGBTQ Ugandans with whom he met described the law “as just one moment.” 

“Obviously there is lots of work that has been done, that continues to be done to respond to this moment,” he told the Blade. “They know that there’s going to be a lot of work that needs to continue to really address a lot of the root causes and to really back humanity to the community.” 

Gilliam further noted it will “take some years to recover from the damage of 2023 and the AHA (Anti-Homosexuality Act) there.” He added activists are “already laying down the groundwork for what that work looks like” in terms of finding MPs, religious leaders, human rights activists and family members who may become allies.

“Those types of allyships are going to be key to building back the community and to continue the resiliency of the movement,” said Gilliam.

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Texas

Pornhub blocks Texas accessing site over age verification law

Court battle forced statute to take effect

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Washingtonporn Blade graphic

Aylo (formerly MindGeek) the largest global adult online entertainment conglomerate, owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, has restricted access to its platforms including its flagship Pornhub in Texas after a court battle forces the state’s age verification law to take effect.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton had appealed a U.S. District Court decision that enjoined him from enforcing House Bill 1181. Paxton and others argued that purveyors of obscene materials online needed to institute reasonable age-verification measures to safeguard children from pornography. 

A week ago the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially vacated the original injunction, ruling that the age verification requirements are constitutional. 

“Applying rational-basis review, the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography,” the three judge panel of the 5th Circuit explained. “Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.”

While the court vacated the injunction against the age-verification requirement of the statute, it upheld the lower court’s injunction against a separate section of the law that would require pornography websites to display a health warning on their landing page and all advertisements. 

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

The Houston Chronicle reported people who go to the site are now greeted with a long message from the company railing against the legal change as “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” The company calls for age verification by the makers of devices that let people on the internet, instead of individual websites.

Age verification legislation was enacted in several states in 2023 in addition to Texas, including North Carolina, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and Virginia.

The new laws require users to provide digital confirmation via a certified approved third party vendor like London-based digital identity company Yoti. The other possibility would be a state approved digital ID such as the California DMV’s Wallet app, which contains a mobile driver’s license.

Users accessing Pornhub from within Louisiana are presented with a different webpage that directs them to verify their age with the state’s digital ID system, known as LA Wallet. The law passed in 2022 subjects adult websites to damage lawsuits and state civil penalties as high as $5,000 a day if they fail to verify that users are at least 18 years old by requiring the use of digitized, state-issued driver’s licenses or other methods.

The Associated Press reported this past October that an adult entertainment group’s lawsuit against a Louisiana law requiring sexually explicit websites to verify the ages of their viewers was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan in New Orleans.

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

Potential or existing Pornhub users in North Carolina and Montana are directed to a video that features adult film star Cherie DeVille, who recites a message also written under the video.

“As you may know, your elected officials in your state are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

“Mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply,” the statement continues. “As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place.”

“Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in [the aforementioned locales]” the message ends with.

The company previously blocked Utah on May 7, 2023. CNN reported at the time:

Affected users are shown a message expressing opposition to Senate Bill 287, the Utah law signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in March that creates liability for porn sites that make their content available to people below the age of 18.

“As you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the message said. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

Courthouse News reported that after Virginia’s bill was passed in June, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, criticized the state for not creating a system for age verification, and instead leaving it up to websites to manage the process, citing security risks.  

“We passed a bill during this session to protect children from online porn. However the executive branch had an obligation to create a system for age verification,” Lucas said on X, formerly Twitter. “We will continue our work to keep pornography out of the hands of minors … but we will also work to ensure that this Governor’s error does not put the privacy of Virginians at further risk.”

Beyond the U.S. in the European Union, Pornhub and two more of the world’s biggest porn websites face new requirements in the European Union that include verifying the ages of users, under the EU’s Digital Services Act.

According to a December 20 report from the Associated Press, Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat have now been classed as “very large online platforms” subject to more stringent controls under the Digital Services Act because they each have 45 million average monthly users, according to the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch.

They are the first porn sites to be targeted by the sweeping Digital Services Act, which imposes tough obligations to keep users safe from illegal content and dodgy products, the Associated Press reported last month.

In addition to the adult entertainment websites, any violations are punishable by fines of up to 6% of global revenue or even a ban on operating in the EU. Some 19 online platforms and search engines have already been identified for stricter scrutiny under the DSA, including TikTok, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google and more.

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