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SPECIAL REPORT In their own words: elders facing poverty, ageism

Older LGBT adults on unemployment, fears for future

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Mary Paradise, Sage, agism, gay news, Washington Blade
Mary Paradise, Sage, ageism, gay news, Washington Blade

‘They never say ‘you’re too old.’ They say, ‘we want someone who graduated more recently,’ said D.C. resident Mary Paradise of her prolonged job search. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Editor’s note: This is the second 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.

 

Today — and every day for the next 16 years — 10,000 baby boomers, members of the generation born between 1946 and 1964, will turn 65, according to the Pew Research Center. About 1.5 million gay, lesbian and bisexual elders in the United States are gay. By 2030, that number is expected to increase to nearly 3 million, according to a report by Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE), the Movement Advancement Project and Center for American Progress.

One in six Americans over 65 lives in poverty, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“For LGBT older adults, a lifetime of employment discrimination, among other factors, contribute to disproportionately high poverty rates,” the SAGE website states.

LGBT elders living in or near poverty aren’t just statistics. The Blade interviewed several LGBT elders, aged 50 and older, from St. Louis to Chicago to New York City to Washington, D.C. Here are their stories:

A little peanut butter, maybe some pizza or Ramen noodles is a typical meal for Robyn Sullivan, a 57-year-old transgender woman living in New York City, who struggles to pull together $25 a week for food. In the past, she’s lived in homeless shelters. Now, she lives in a cockroach infested third floor walk-up with four gender non-conforming struggling artists.

“This is the hardest place in the country to live if you don’t make tons of money,” said Sullivan, who suffers from clinical depression and arthritis. “They wanted me to work one day a week for eight hours at a construction site with my limitations to qualify for $190 of food stamps. Working there would be too dangerous.”

Her plight is common among transgender people, Sullivan said. “Dealing with transphobia is nothing I can win at.”

In the 1990s, Sullivan was a skilled software project manager. “I used to make six figures,” she said. “When I was living as a white male professional, I was getting privilege far beyond what any human being deserves. Then I needed to transition and there was the downturn in Silicon Valley.”

After a couple of years, her savings were gone.

“As you go along into poverty, there are things that make people avoid you,” said Sullivan, who now works part-time as a receptionist for SAGE. “I wasn’t hired for a job around the corner from here. They said I wasn’t trustworthy because I lived in a homeless shelter,” she said.

Sullivan encounters not only transphobia but ageism. “When you’re past 50, no company with a retirement plan will hire you,” Sullivan said.

Even with all that she endures, Sullivan says she doesn’t harbor regrets. “When I came out as a trans woman, I felt like I was the woman I was,” she said. “I chose to stop living a lie.  Knowing what I know now, I doubt I would have done anything differently.”

It’s not always been as good for him as it is now, 70-year-old Roger Beyers of Chicago told the Blade. But “nobody ever said, life’s going to be a bed of roses,” he said.

Beyers, who retired at 66 after working for 40 years for Jewel, a Chicago area grocer, is HIV positive.

“My income is less than $12,000 per year,” he said. “My housing is subsidized by Chicago House. Before I was admitted to Chicago House, I was on the verge of homelessness. I’m on Medicare and Medicaid.”

Medicaid pays for his HIV medication, Beyers said. “If I had to pay for it, it would cost $18,000. I couldn’t afford it,” he said. “If it were to collapse, I’d be in a fragile position.”

Though he struggles with issues of economic insecurity, he feels that he’s overcoming some of them, Beyers said. He recently started a part-time internship with the Center on Halsted in Chicago.

“My financial situation has dramatically changed,” Beyers said. “There’s a world of difference between living on Social Security and having money left over at the end of the month.”

For one day a week at the Center, he assists with an HIV counseling hotline. “I love it,” Beyers said. “I can say to an HIV-positive person: ‘I’ve been there, done that and survived it all.’”

He finds strength and joy from his boyfriend Eduardo. “A shout-out for my boyfriend! I may end up marrying this man,” he said.

Mary Paradise, 62, a Capital Pride board member and Washington, D.C. resident, has been looking for work for more than a year. She worked as a nurse for 42 years. Paradise, while working as a health marketing consultant, was laid off due to downsizing. Throughout her job search, she’s often encountered ageism, Paradise said.

“They never say ‘you’re too old.’ They say, ‘we want someone who graduated more recently’ or ‘you’re over qualified,’” she said. “I say to them, ‘you must want someone who’s younger.’”

It gets discouraging, Paradise said. She’s used up her savings and in three months her unemployment benefits will run out, unless Congress extends the benefits. “It gets scary,” Paradise said, “it’s a humbling experience. I’ve worked all my life. For Congress to think I’m lazy is insulting.”

But Paradise is optimistic. She volunteers at her church. “My faith is such that I believe I will be taken care of if I just keep moving forward,” she said. “I have friends who are wonderfully supportive. I have some job leads. Something will come my way that’s a perfect fit.”

Barbara Woodruff, ageism, gay news, Washington Blade

Barbara Woodruff, 64, of St. Louis says she gets by on her $633 Social Security check each month.

Like many baby boomers, Barbara Woodruff, 64, of St. Louis thought that she had plenty of money put away for retirement. But like far too many people, especially lesbians, she found herself with no savings when she reached retirement age, Woodruff said. She gets by on her monthly $633 Social Security check. Fortunately, Woodruff says, she has Medicare and Medicaid.

“Thank God, that paid for my medication when my thyroid went haywire,” she said. “I’m fortunate. I pay $202 in rent for a nice one-bedroom apartment. It’s HUD-subsidized through the Cardinal Ritter Senior Services housing program.”

Woodruff’s partner of 20 years died in a boating accident in 1988. “When she passed, I lost the house. It was in her name. We didn’t think about those things then,” she said.

Over the years, Woodruff has done everything from working in a nursing recruitment office to running, with a business partner, an event designing business to clerking at a convenience store. “You do what you have to do to put food on the table,” she said.

For several years, Woodruff stopped working to take care of her now deceased mother.  “Her Social Security was very little. But I’d do it again,” she said.

Because of her low income, Woodruff doesn’t go out to eat much. “The LGBT community is very supportive here. There’s a great lesbian hangout. I like to see my friends there. I can’t afford to go there now,” she said. “I eat less meat and a lot more fresh fruit and veggies for my health — meat’s expensive.”

Without the social safety net of health insurance and her housing subsidy, she doesn’t know if she’d be alive, Woodruff said.

“I wouldn’t do myself in,” she said. “My friends would make sure I’d have a place to live. I’d be grateful to have a room in their house. But it wouldn’t be my home.”

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Federal judge blocks Trump’s order restricting gender-affirming care for youth

Seven families with transgender, nonbinary children challenged directive

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President Donald Trump (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A federal judge on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order that blocks President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order restricting access to gender-affirming health care for transgender people under age 19.

The order by Judge Brendan Hurson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, came in response to a request from the plaintiffs in a lawsuit, filed on Feb. 4, against Trump’s directive.

The plaintiffs are seven families with trans or nonbinary children. They are represented by PFLAG National, GMLA, Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Maryland, and the law firms Hogan Lovells and Jenner & Block.

Hurson’s temporary restraining order will halt enforcement of Trump’s order for 14 days, but it can be extended. This means health care providers and medical institutions can provide gender-affirming care to minor patients without the risk of losing federal funding.

Families in the lawsuit say their appointments were cancelled shortly after the executive order was issued. Hospitals in Colorado, Virginia, and D.C. stopped providing prescriptions for puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and other interventions for trans patients as they evaluated Trump’s directive.

The harms associated with suddenly withholding access to medical care for these patients were a major focus of Thursday’s hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for the temporary restraining order.

The president’s “order seems to deny that this population even exists, or deserves to exist,” Hurson said, noting the elevated risk of suicide, poverty, addiction, and other hardships among trans people.

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Trump’s trans erasure arrives at National Park Service

Fate of major 2016 LGBTQ Theme Study unclear

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NYC Pride participants in front of the Stonewall Inn in 2019. (File photo by Andrew Nasonov)

President Trump’s efforts at erasing trans identity intensified this week as employees at the National Park Service were instructed to remove the “T” and “Q” from “LGBTQ” from all internal and external communications.

The change was first noticed on the website of the Stonewall National Monument; trans people of color were integral to the events at Stonewall, which is widely viewed as the kickoff of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The Stonewall National Monument is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history.

Reaction to that move was swift. New York City Council member Erik Bottcher wrote, “The Trump administration has erased transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website. We will not allow them to erase the very existence of our siblings. We are one community!!”

But what most didn’t realize is that the removal of the “T” and “Q” (for transgender and queer) extends to all National Park Service and Interior Department communications, raising concerns that the move could jeopardize future LGBTQ monuments and project work.

The Blade reached out to the National Park Service for comment on the trans erasure and received a curt response that the agency is implementing Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” as well as agency directives to end all DEI initiatives.

The question being debated internally now, according to a knowledgable source, is what to do with a massive LGBTQ Theme Study, which as of Feb. 14 was still available on the NPS website. In 2014, the Gill Foundation recognized an omission of historic LGBTQ sites in the nation’s records, and the organization made a grant to the National Park Service to commission a first-of-its-kind LGBTQ Theme Study, which was published in 2016. It was a landmark project that represented major progress for the LGBTQ community in having our contributions included in the broader American story, something that is becoming increasingly difficult given efforts like “Don’t Say Gay” laws that ban the teaching of LGBTQ topics in schools.

A source told the Blade that National Park Service communications staff suggested that removing chapters of the 2016 Theme Study that pertain to transgender people might placate anti-trans political appointees. But one employee pushed back on that, suggesting instead that the entire Theme Study be removed. Editing the document to remove one community’s contributions and perspective violates the academic intent of the project, according to the source. A final decision on how to proceed is expected soon. 

Meanwhile, a protest is planned for Friday, Feb. 14 at noon at Christopher Park in New York City (7th Ave. S. and Christopher Street). The protest is being planned by staff at the Stonewall Inn. 

“The Stonewall Inn and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative are outraged and appalled by the recent removal of the word ‘transgender’ from the Stonewall National Monument page on the National Park Service website,” the groups said in a statement. “Let us be clear: Stonewall is transgender history. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and countless other trans and gender-nonconforming individuals fought bravely, and often at great personal risk, to push back against oppressive systems. Their courage, sacrifice, and leadership were central to the resistance we now celebrate as the foundation of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.”

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Victory Institute executive director speaks about movement response to Trump 2.0

Advocacy groups will lead efforts to push back against anti-LGBTQ administration

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LGBTQ Victory Institute Executive Director Elliot Imse speaks at the International LGBTQ Leaders Conference on Dec. 1, 2022. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

President Donald Trump’s issuance of a series of executive orders targeting transgender rights and LGBTQ-inclusive diversity programs on the first day of his second term was a clear signal of the new administration’s appetite for going after queer and gender diverse people. 

The Jan. 20 directives also brought into focus the extent to which organizations in the LGBTQ movement, particularly those whose work includes impact litigation, will be responsible for protecting the communities they serve from harmful and discriminatory laws and policies over the next four years.

At a critical time that is likely to test the limits of their capacity, these groups are facing challenges that could restrict their access to critical resources thanks in part to the conservative movement’s opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion in both government and the private sector. 

LGBTQ organizations expected federal funding for their work would dry up when the incoming administration took over, given that Trump and his allies made no secret of their plans to aggressively reshape the government including by ridding U.S. agencies of all DEI-related programs, policies, and activities. 

Trump went even further, however, issuing orders to categorically freeze the disbursement of government funds tied to preexisting grants and contracts, while threatening investigations of private companies for “illegal” policies and practices related to DEI.

Partly in response to pressure from conservative leaders and activists, over the past couple of years companies have increasingly backed away from DEI efforts including, especially, support for LGBTQ communities and causes. 

Coupled with the loss of federal funding, a decline in corporate giving to LGBTQ organizations could have devastating impacts on the communities they serve, potentially leading to cutbacks in programs and services core to their missions or imperiling their efforts to push back against a hostile regime. 

“Continuing to fund our work is obviously top of mind for everyone right now,” Elliot Imse, executive director of the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, told the Washington Blade during an interview last week.  

The move by many private companies away from supporting LGBTQ equality has been surprising, Imse said, but “what we know is it’s a very uncertain environment for corporations right now, and they are feeling out these new realities.” 

On the other hand, the moment also presents an opportunity to remind businesses that commitments to DEI are good for their bottom line while rewarding companies that resist pressure to abandon their LGBTQ customers, employees, and communities, Imse said. 

“There’s a lot of courageous corporations out there, too, right now, a lot that are continuing to step up. And we need to be grateful; we need to be making purchasing decisions as a community with those corporations in mind. Every corporation that has reaffirmed its commitment to us, we need to go out and support them.” 

“While Victory Institute — like all LGBTQ+ organizations — is concerned about the current fundraising environment, we have a programmatic plan in place that directly addresses the realities of what is happening across the country right now,” he said, with programs to support LGBTQ elected officials serving everywhere from small municipal offices to the most powerful positions in government. 

A diverse pipeline of out leaders from diverse backgrounds is the best bulwark “against attacks on our equality and democratic backsliding,” Imse said. “We have a very robust programmatic plan for 2025 — and we need to execute on it at this critical moment.”

While the Victory Institute is currently looking for funding to support the organization’s international work to compensate for the loss of federal grants, Imse said the group plans to expand U.S.-based programs, maximizing their reach at a time when this work is especially critical.  

“We’re going to be in more cities than ever before. We’re going to have a larger training presence than ever before, including our LGBTQ+ Public Leadership Summits, which are specifically designed to inspire and recruit LGBTQ+ people to run for office. It is essential folks reject the demoralization of the current moment and that we have more boots on the ground to support those willing to step up and run.” 

He added, “we are hopeful that we will be able to raise the money we need to carry these programs out, and we believe we can make the case to donors that these programs are an essential path forward.” 

At the same time, Imse acknowledged that LGBTQ groups, including the Victory Institute, are in a difficult position at the moment and “we’ll absolutely have to adjust if we see a downturn in fundraising throughout the year.”

“it’s going to be an uphill battle, there’s no doubt about that. Like all other organizations, we’re going to watch the numbers and adjust as necessary,” he said, adding, “the people we have at our organization are what makes our organization strong — their expertise, their relationships, the networks that they’ve built.” 

And while he said “making sure that we meet the moment is something that keeps me up at night,” Imse stressed that “figuring out how to balance the reality we are in versus optimism is something that is on everyone’s mind as you talk to LGBTQ+ community members, your staff, your funders” who recognize that “you must have hope, because if people back away from our equality at this moment, it’ll be much worse than even the situation we’re in right now.”

There is no shortage of good reasons to hold onto hope, Imse said. “Our movement has always thrived in moments of crisis. While we’d prefer no crisis, it refocuses us. It motivates us. And oftentimes leads to breakthroughs that we may not have had otherwise. It destroys complacency. It instills urgency.”

After Trump took office and the new Congress was sated with GOP majorities in both chambers, LGBTQ groups whose work includes lobbying or government relations understood their ability to influence policy at the federal level would be limited, at least until Democratic allies have the opportunity to retake control of the House in 2026. 

The Victory Institute was especially well positioned to shift away from Washington, Imse said, because state legislatures, city councils, and school boards have always been the organization’s “bread and butter” and the elections for these positions “truly matter” even if they are less “high profile” than U.S. congressional races. 

“When we’re talking about opportunities to make progress in the near future, opportunities to launch a successful offense and defense, it is in these legislative bodies,” he said. “And they arguably make more impact on individuals’ lives than the federal government does.”

Imse added this is especially true with regard to opportunities for legislative action to support LGBTQ Americans and defend their rights, which is unlikely to happen on Capitol Hill for a “long time.” 

It is especially important now that LGBTQ communities and organizations support each other, he said. 

LGBTQ movement groups, particularly those with international focus, “have been phenomenal in bringing us together and trying to find out what’s been done, keeping us up to date on potential litigation opportunities, as well as looking for funders that are willing to step up at this absolutely critical moment in our movement’s history,” Imse said. 

“We also need our community to step up in terms of supporting these organizations,” he said, “financially through resources and capacity and giving their time, because that’s the only way we’re going to be able to move forward effectively.”

It is “important that our community members remain active, engaged, and involved, and that our LGBTQ+ media continues to ensure our stories are being told,” Imse said, adding, “Especially right now, this is an entire movement ecosystem that is working to make sure whatever backsliding is about to occur is not permanent.”

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