NEW YORK — Frank Carter was once a globe-trotting professional dancer; his world is smaller now. He battles multiple health problems, walks with a cane and rarely leaves his Manhattan apartment.
As an 86-year-old gay man, with no family nearby and many acquaintances long since dead, he might seem a likely prospect for isolation.
Instead, he has kindled a deep, five-year friendship with Gigi Stoll, a fashion model-turned-photographer half his age. Stoll helps Carter with medical arrangements, writes to him when she travels overseas, and sat with him for six hours during his most recent hospitalization.
“The other guys in the hospital, no one was coming in to see them,” Carter said. “To get that gift, you have to be lucky.”
It’s not just luck. Stoll came into his life though a program that matches infirm gays and lesbians with volunteers who commit to weekly visits.
Long overlooked by society at large, and even by younger gays, elderly gays and lesbians are emerging as a distinct community, getting more help and attention as they confront challenges that differ in many ways from their heterosexual counterparts.
Advocacy groups say the estimated 2.5 million gay seniors in America are twice as likely to live alone, four times less likely to have adult children to help them, and far more fearful of discrimination from health care workers.
Many fear anti-gay animosity or bias at senior centers, in nursing homes and from health care providers. Some gay elders even keep their sexual orientation secret from the home health aides who may provide their only sustained company.
A watershed moment comes this month, when AARP — the largest advocacy group for Americans older than 50 — for the first time sponsors a major national conference focused on gay and lesbian aging. It’s being organized by SAGE, or Service and Advocacy for GLBT Elders, the New York-based organization that counts Carter and Stoll among its thousands of clients and volunteers.
If some gays in their 70s and 80s have been emboldened to speak up, the noise level from the generation following them will certainly be louder.
Gay and lesbian baby boomers have been accustomed to being more open about their sexuality and aggressive in seeking civil rights. This means that policy makers are likely to face ongoing pressure from gay seniors to take their priorities into account.
Another challenge facing gay baby boomers — perhaps more so than their straight counterparts — is ageism. They perceive the celebration of youth and good looks, and the relative invisibility of older people, to be particularly pervasive in gay popular culture.
“It overvalues one stage in your life and underscores a fear of getting old — not just 70 or 80, but 40 or 50,” said Amber Hollibaugh, 62, an expert on aging with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “You’re terrified. You think, ‘It’s over for me.’ It creates a tendency to lie about how old we are.”
Gay boomers are apt to shake up this mindset, Hollibaugh said. “It’s not a generation that’s going to be quiet in the face of their own community’s refusal to deal with aging.”
