55 and gay: Frederick’s older LGBTQ population endured long road but still faces challenges
Shawn, 62, brought most of them to the house when he moved in with Rick in 2000. It was a challenge, but after seven years of living next door to each other and dating in secret, it was only a minor bump in the road.
"The hardest part about moving in together was he's a dog person and I'm not," Rick says. "Shawn had a Labrador retriever and I'm more uptight than he is. I'd get on his case about the dog. It would scratch up the floor, poop all over the yard.
"And," he adds, "Shawn made me sell all my stuff so he could move all of his s*** in here."
Now, more than 17 years later, the couple stands in the kitchen as Shawn steams a pot of broccoli for dinner. Shawn's the cook -- free flowing and creative, often messy. Rick, who baked a pie the night before, is the baker in the relationship -- precise and meticulous, rarely diverting from a recipe.
"He's like a short order cook," says Rick, 56. "He can put a meal together in 20 minutes. Me? I have to look at the directions. I made a pie last night and it took two hours because I follow the directions."
Today, the couple is happy and comfortable. But Shawn and Rick entered into adulthood at a time when being gay wasn't as widely accepted as it is today. They struggled with accepting it themselves. They tried to change. They tried to hide, but today, they're out in the open.
Still, as members of the LGBTQ community, they find themselves searching for answers, grasping for acceptance. And even with as far as society has come, they sometimes continue to wonder what hatred could be waiting around the corner.
'I hated gay people'
Shawn and Rick met in 1991, when the two were leaders at an ex-gay group called
Shawn was born into a Presbyterian family, and Rick was raised as a Southern Baptist, both of which were known as conservative churches. Rick never felt comfortable as a gay man in the church, so he tried dating women in college, hoping he would grow out of his same-sex attractions. But, the relationships never felt quite right, so after seeing an ad in the paper about the group, Rick joined an
The group didn't practice electroshock therapy, Rick noted, but it imparted the need to pray and develop "healthy" same-sex relationships with straight men. As strict as it was, oddly, it was the first time Rick had been around anyone who was like him.
"I never knew any gay people," Rick says now. "It was my first exposure to gay people, but we didn't consider ourselves gay, because the church said nobody was really gay -- people were just confused."
Around the time Rick joined the group, Shawn, who was also in the group, had moved to
"I had to get away from places I could hang out at as a gay man," Shawn says. "I thought
Both Shawn and Rick would become leaders in the group and lead group activities with the non-residents of Regeneration. But, the group became the subject of protests from the
Originally, Rick didn't see the organization as a benefit to gay men. He was one after all, and he was met with verbal abuse from the very people saying they were trying to protect him.
As a former Republican, Rick had a Bush-Quayle bumper sticker on his car, and at one point, someone wrote over top of it that Rick was a "racist homophobe," he recalled.
"That really upset me," says Rick today. "I let them do what they wanna do -- why aren't they letting me do what I wanna do? Just leave me alone and let me do what I wanna do. I really hated gay people. People in my ex-gay group we were just trying to do what we thought was right. It was my choice. I thought it was the right thing to do based on what the bible said."
When Shawn and Rick first met, it was no love at first sight. Rick thought Shawn was snobby. Shawn thought Rick was a loner. Both were quiet and didn't immediately try to get to know the other. But the longer they were in the group, the more they interacted, and the closer they got, eventually deciding they wanted to be in a relationship. The ex-gay group often had that effect. The group leaders encouraged attendees not to hang out outside of meetings because residents would hook up. But, sometimes there was no stopping it.
"It was actually a good place to meet people with similar values," Shawn says. "If they were cute, then we'd get with them."
As the two grew closer, they knew the group wasn't going to "cure" them of anything. There was nothing to cure. They were who they were, they loved who they loved and they loved each other.
When the house next to Shawn's in
"For six years, I never told a single person," Rick says. "Shawn was the only one who knew."
'My motto was "keep 'em guessing"'
Like Shawn and Rick,
Sky always considered herself to be androgynous -- partly male and partly female in appearance. She was the youngest of three daughters, and her father largely raised her as a boy. She remembers coming home from church and changing out of her church clothes and into her tomboy clothes.
"When I changed into those clothes, I believed I'd changed genders," she says now.
In high school, she kept her hair short. She dated boys, but, mostly, she treated guys like friends, often shunning their sexual advances.
"I realize now that was power I had over people," Sky recalls. "My motto was, 'keep 'em guessing.'"
These days, she has long, straight silver hair, which she hasn't cut since she married Lauren in 2007.
Sky knew she had same-sex attractions, but, in the 1970s, there wasn't a name for what she was feeling. Lauren, on the other hand, dated more seriously in high school. She knew she was a lesbian when she was 10 years old, but as a little girl born in the 1950s, society told her there was a specific way to live.
"As a girl, you imagine your wedding dress," says Lauren. "You imagine everything you're supposed to, even if you don't fit with that. It's just what you're supposed to do. I just got swept along in what society said I was supposed to do."
Lauren got so swept along that she actually ended up marrying a man that she met in high school. She first noticed him because he was wearing a large cast on his leg, after breaking his leg at football practice. Lauren found him to be a gentle spirit -- not intimidated by a woman who was seeking to make a career for herself. He eventually became a scientist. He wasn't necessarily feminine, but he wasn't oozing machismo either, Lauren recalls.
"He just didn't have anything to prove," Lauren says. "He knew I had these same-sex attractions, but he took it as a compliment that I would pick him to love rather than just pick by a category."
When they were planning the wedding, the couple discussed Lauren changing her last name to share his, a step she wasn't comfortable taking. She tried to explain to him that she didn't feel good about changing her name, and offered that he if was adamant about sharing a name, he could change his to Nogrady.
"He was like, 'but that's not my ... oh,' and then he got it," Lauren recalls. "He was a very fair-minded person. ... But eventually, you find you'd rather follow your heart."
Following her heart required a little bit of luck.
Or divine intervention
Or fate.
Years after divorcing her husband and separating with another partner, Lauren was looking to downsize and had a yard sale at her home. She downsized so much she sold her house after a bidding war started for it at the yard sale. She sold it to a family with a small red car, she recalls.
Two days later, with the shock from selling her home at a yard sale still weighing on her, a small red car pulled into the driveway. She figured it was the family who bought the house coming with a question, even though they had told her they'd be out of town. Instead, it was Sky, who had been driving to a friend's house on the same street, but had pulled into the wrong driveway.
The two met briefly, long enough for Sky to ask where her friend Ramona's house was. She also asked Lauren to give her directions. The seemingly innocuous moment long enough to make a connection.
"When I saw her on the porch, I didn't see Lauren, I saw
Said Lauren, "I tell her where Ramona lives, but in my head I know she's here to see me. It's not a mistake. She's not at the wrong house, you know? I kept wondering if she would think I'm a lunatic if I said 'Ramona is next door, but you're right where you need to be.'"
Coming out
Coming out can result in a mix of responses for members of the LGBTQ community.
When
For Shawn, the challenge of coming out was made a little bit easier because his mother, who was raised Mormon, was going through her own battle with cancer at the time. So when he broached the topic with her just before starting with the ex-gay group, she was supportive.
"It was just kind of being honest and having that time together," said Shawn, whose father had already died by the time he came out.
Years later, he would come out to his sister and brother in an email to "address the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about."
Shawn's brother, from whom Shawn says he's currently estranged, called and said he loved Shawn. Shawn's sister had her children, who Shawn helped raise, call him and tell him they loved him no matter what.
"It made me cry a lot," Shawn says. "My identity was with this church group I'd been going to since I was a teen. I was trying to fit in and be the perfect person I knew I'd never be. Hearing that made that struggle a lot easier."
Rick's family was equally supportive. He told his family about his same-sex attractions as he was going to the ex-gay group. As the most conservative member of the family, he was the only person who cared about his sexuality, he said.
"They were probably cheering when they found out," Rick said. "You know how they always say a mother knows? She swears she didn't know. She was really surprised."
Till death do we part
For gay couples in their 50s and 60s, marriage has been illegal for much of their adult lives -- and it still is in many states. As gay couples began applying for marriage licenses, states started passing laws to outlaw same-sex marriage. In 1973,
"It seemed kind of fun to go get married right before they revoked [our right to do so] and see what they would do, then, with the people who were already legally married," Katherine says. "And so we did."
"It wasn't the most romantic impulse," Anne adds. "They're saying we can't? Well, then let's go do it. That kind of thing."
While marriage wasn't necessary for them to prove their love to one another, the union came with certain rights and protections in which everyone should be able to participate, Katherine notes.
"Society creates this benefit to folks," she says. "I've always believed everyone should be able to participate in the benefits of society. There shouldn't be any difference, no matter who you are."
Instead, couples who couldn't marry would be forced to come up with "make-dos," as Katherine labels them, like signing joint tenants with rights of survivorship agreements, or writing out living and non-living wills. Inheritance is automatic for married couples, but that's not the case if the couple isn't married.
Gay couples also struggled for rights of legal guardianship, including the most landmark case, which involved a woman named
"There are plenty of things you can do to get by," Katherine says. "You can have a will that covers many things. ... But it's much nicer not to have to worry about it legally."
Still, gay couples had years of worrying about it before things got better. In 1996, President
"I might have let her get the whole sentence out before saying yes," Lauren says now.
They took a year planning the wedding before the couple decided to elope in
But upon returning, they started fielding questions about just how legitimate their marriage could be. Even their attorney at the time, never having come across this situation before, asked if they had to get re-married in the States.
"People asked since we married in
When Rick and Shawn first got together, same-sex marriage had already been outlawed in
The ceremony was like graduation, Rick recalled. Everyone who was participating had to stand up to be recognized, get a certificate and then sit back down. It didn't count for anything legally, but it was the first time the couple could truly show they were committed to each other in front of others.
"It meant a lot," Shawn says. "It showed that we really love each other, and we weren't just screwing each other for fun."
The couple would get their chance for a ceremony that did mean something a few years later.
"When we went to D.C to get the wedding license, it hit me," he says. "It was like, 'Wow, I'm doing what my parents got to do. I'm equal to them.'"
The importance of support
As beneficial as the legalization of same-sex marriage was to the LGBTQ community, the community still faces challenges -- many of which are exacerbated as the population ages.
First, America's population is aging in general. By 2050, the number of people over the age of 65 will double to 83.7 million from 43.1 million in 2012. There are currently more than 2.7 million LGBT adults age 50 and over, according to a study by SAGE, an advocacy organization for LGBT older adults.
Those 2.7 million adults are more likely to live in poverty, less likely to have housing and less likely to find consistent employment, according to the study. Among respondents to the
A more common challenge for LGBT older adults is finding a support network. Many older LGBT people grew up in a time when having a partner of the same gender could be punishable by jail time. Many of them were rejected when coming out to their families, and LGBT people are far less likely to have children than non-same-sex couples, according to the study. Older LGBT couples are also typically less receptive to nursing home and assisted living facilities, the study said.
While Sky and Lauren would have liked to have kids, they met so late in life that neither felt like having kids was in the cards.
"It was one thing we grieved," Sky says. "I never wanted children ... but later in our relationship, we realized we would have been really good parents together. So it's sad. If we met 15 years earlier, we probably would have adopted or had a child."
Shawn raised his sister's children for most of their lives and by the time he met Rick, he had his fix of having kids. Rick had always envisioned himself getting married and having kids before he became satisfied with himself as a gay man. When they started dating, Shawn was over 30 and the couple talked about it, but they decided it was probably too late for them to have kids.
But with no kids, older LGBT couples are often left with not only no one to leave their belongings to, but they also don't have the built-in informal familial networks of support that many non-LGBT elders rely on as they age, comprised of spouses, siblings, children and grandchildren.
"Reliant on friends and family of choice elders may become isolated as their friends also age or they need to enter a long-term care facility because they lack people to care for them," the study said. "Likewise, friends and chosen family are not able to make important decisions for elders in most cities and states, as these relationships are not given precedence over family in the absence of legal planning documents."
Shawn and Rick have developed a strong support network among friends from the Frederick Center, a
But even with those close-knit support groups, some LGBTQ older adults are left wondering what will happen as they age, or when a partner dies.
"Shawn is six years older than me," Rick says. "My parents live on the west coast. Our siblings are far away. So, yeah, I'm concerned about what's going to happen as we get older. But there's nothing I can do about it except maintain those close relationships with our friends."
LGBT older adults also frequently report challenges of accessing health care, according to the SAGE study. Challenges range from legal restrictions on visitation, medical decision-making and family leave for friends and chosen family, to overt discrimination from health care providers, according to the study. And there are few resources for aging adults in the LGBTQ community.
"Young people get a lot of support, and rightfully so," Rick says. "They need that support. But I'm 56 and I feel like I still have issues I'm dealing with. And sometimes I'm not sure how to deal with those."
New challenges
Maybe more pressing for LGBT older adults today is what they view as a negative direction for the community in the country due to the current administration. In his first year as president,
"Things were really good there for a while," says Katherine. "And it seems like there was some complacency and now this administration wants to go in a direction that I view as not a positive one."
Last month's appointment of
"There's a tremendous fear that we could lose what we've fought 45 years for," Sky says. "As queer people, we're on the verge losing everything we've fought to attain."
Before LGBTQ rights became a hot button issue politically, Rick and Shawn were both registered as
"Bush said he'd be a compassionate conservative, but he had [
Politics isn't the only taboo dinner-table conversation topic by which Rick and Shawn feel deceived. As they sit down to eat a dinner of grilled chicken, rice and broccoli, the couple holds hands and bows their heads to pray. Rick gives his thanks for Shawn's love and kindness. He asks to use the food in order to do the Lord's will. It's a grace they've been saying for 25 years, and while their relationship with their Lord hasn't wavered, their relationships with churches have at times.
After Rick and Shawn left the ex-gay group, they continued to attend an evangelical church. But, the preacher at their church in
"These are supposed to be my people," Rick says. "They don't understand what I've gone through. I just wonder, why are sexual sins the biggest sins? There are all sorts of sins in the bible. Why do they pick the sexual sins, when it's right there next to gluttony?"
Now, they attend
Shawn and Rick enjoy their new community -- one that is made up of members from so many varying backgrounds. It's a place where they've found full acceptance, despite still dealing with their betrayal.
"I got angry [at religion]," Shawn says. "There was this hypocrisy -- they would preach hurtful things about gays, but they'd try to get them to come into the church to get donations from them. Like today with immigrants, it's easier to point the finger at someone who's different and say they're the problem than it is to look at yourself and say 'I've got some stuff to work on."
As the LGBTQ community has grown, so has its voice. The youth in particular has become vocal in communities advocating for their rights. But, in some ways, their advocacy has slightly pushed the older generation out of the conversation. Flamboyant pride parties have, at times, caused Shawn to question if the events are really for him.
"It's a little bit much for me," Shawn says. "I'm an old man now. I told Rick, sometimes I don't feel like Pride is for me. It seems like a place for people to kind of get your freak on and be who you wanna be at that time. So, I don't do it. I feel like an outsider."
The growing identities of people has also caused older members of the community to pause and reflect. Shawn had never known trans people until recently, so while he supports trans people being who they are, he finds it hard to relate to what they're going through, he said.
Sky, who is a therapist and sometimes works with LGBTQ youth, has noticed the increased amount of identifiers that LGBTQ youth are using, and wonders if siloing identities is they best way for these youth to cope.
"I'm trying to wrap my head around all of these identifiers on the specturm, where I'd rather not see them have to claim one, but practice fluidity," she says.
One criticism they have for the youth, as vocal as they may be, is that they may take their acceptance in the community for granted, unaware of the sacrifices it took to get to this point. Many kids don't realize how new it is for an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old to announce he or she is gay, or lesbian, or bi-sexual, or transgender or intersex, or queer, or asexual or any number of other identifiers. Because, 40 and 50 years ago, none of that existed.
These couples went years knowing they were different, and not having the language to explain how. They spent years loving people they felt they could never love in public. They were gay before it was socially acceptable to be gay.
"They don't realize how new it is to see gay couples at the senior prom," Lauren says. "Or how new it is to say, 'This is my date this weekend' and be able to introduce the boy next door and not the girl next door."
And that's important. Because as Shawn and Rick would attest, sometimes the boy next door isn't just the boy next door.
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