LGBTQ seniors in Milwaukee on the unique challenges they face

Bill is a proud veteran who lived 62 years of his closeted life until he came out gay after he retired. Now, at age 83, he’s largely back in the closet, and fellow residents of his Menomonee Falls senior apartment complex don’t know his true sexual orientation. 

“Why should I suddenly come out as gay when I’m already 80 years old?” he says. “You know damn well that if you went out, word of mouth would go faster than fire can go through a forest. And all of a sudden you have these looks.” 

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Being in the closet is just one of a unique set of intersecting challenges that LGBTQ older adults and older adults face. When looking for senior housing facilities, they are less likely to have a partner to help them find a place (and share the costs). When they need a caregiver, they are less likely to be able to rely on adult children for help getting to appointments or procedures. They are more likely to suffer from social isolation and loneliness. Not to mention the discrimination and prejudice that older adults and younger LGBTQ people also face. 

These problems are measurable: LGBTQ older adults are twice as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to live alone, half as likely to have a partner, and four times as likely to have no children to help them along as they age, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health. Services. 

John Griffith, a 75-year-old advocate for the LGBTQ seniors community, is away at his nursing home, but he understands the difficulties many of his colleagues face. “I would be worried too if I had to go to a treatment center or a nursing home. I would disregard the training and development that staff might have.”

Griffith knows Bill from the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, where they meet on Thursdays for an older adult. “There are so many people you can meet in a safe, non-threatening, drug- and alcohol-free environment,” he says.

LGBTQ adults are 56% more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder and nearly three times more likely to develop another substance use disorder. “And that’s very sad,” says Griffith. “And that’s because they had no support systems.” 

Griffith also attends an LGBTQ senior group with 67-year-old Cindy Van Vreede. She organizes activities and events for older adults to get out and be social – enjoy live music, go to the park and take city tours. “This is how we fight isolation and loneliness,” she says. “And we create a family for ourselves with the people around us.” 

And the group has become more than just a social hangout – they support each other in times of need. When Barbara Shapiro, 76, fractured her knee last year, she depended on her friend Van Vreede and other members of their senior group to get to and from meetings. “We try to find ways to help each other,” she says. “We try to take care of each other. It really is a family.”

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What do you wish people knew about LGBTQ seniors?

Barbara Shapiro

“There is a discounting of who we (seniors) are. I have done many things in my life. I wrote a major health study. I’ve had many, many jobs in the corporate world. I feel like our opinions are not valued, they’re overlooked and they’re kind of invisible.” 

John Griffith

“We need to find imaginative ways to expand the number of carers, particularly for those elderly people who live alone.” 

Invoice

That gender is not the defining characteristic of LGBTQ people. “(We) live like anyone else. You could have a job next to a gay person and not know about it.”

Cindy Van Vreede

“I don’t like the word weird. When I was a kid, that was the equivalent of the n-word. Sometimes it’s easy to hide behind the q-word. You don’t have to really identify who you are, what you believe in.”

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