■ICJâ
MAY 6, 2011
•gay&grey.
WWW.JUSTOUT.COM
It Gets Better, Grandpa
Gay & Grey program raises awareness of invisible generation
BY AARON SPENCER
RE FOR DETAILS
■■KH
16 years young, locally
owned, modern & moving
forward. “There really is no
place like hip.”
I laving a closet, hut staying out of it
Gay 6c Grey is a multifaceted program. It
includes housing efforts, diversity training
and social opportunities, among other services.
Until January, the program was called FTder
Resource Alliance. Friendly House, which
runs the program, changed the name. It also
adopted the SH A RE (Senior Housing and
Retirement Enterprises) housing nonprofit
into the program last year.
Now, SH A R E has become a housing sub
committee o f Gay 6c Grey, meant to address
the lack of affordable housing for sexual mi
nority seniors and find LGBTQjfriendly en
vironments if they must go into senior homes.
SH A RE was established in 2001 by partners
Mary Beth Brindley and Evelyn Hall.
“Evelyn and I actually talked about getting
SH A RE together after we had visited a friend
who was 15 years older than we were,” recalls
6c Grey is also working on an evaluation pro
cedure for senior homes. The evaluations,
which senior homes will be able to request,
will be used to determine which senior homes
are LGBTQJriendly, and those homes will be
included in a new directory.
Getting past the “dirty old man”
When Carol French, 69, was still teaching
high school English, she attended a program
called Rainbow Train, a project out of Seattle
that provided training for health care provid
ers on sensitivity toward LGBTQ_patients.
•1APTY DA'.
L GUS* MODERN OUWWG TABLES
ING CHAIRS, ^ ^ ^ k i U C H E S ,
RAGE & A C C E flH I
When Natasha French’s brother started
having children, she was happy for him.
But the more she thought about them, the
more those newborn babies reminded her of
her own mortality.
French, who is a lesbian, doesn’t plan to
have kids. So when she saw her brother with
his children, she considered her parents, who
were growing older. Soon, she thought, her
parents would need their children to take care
o f them. And her brother’s new children, they
would take care of him when he’s old.
But then she thought, “Who’s going to take
care o f me?”
French is 34, but she can already catch a
glimpse o f a future where no family is around
to help her when *she needs it. That future
shouldn’t be hard to imagine; examples o f it
are everywhere.
As many as 10,000 sexual minority seniors
live in the Portland metro area, according to
program officials behind Gay 6c Grey, an ef
fort by the nonprofit Friendly House to pro
vide resources to LG BTQ_ seniors. Program
organizers say those seniors are more likely to
live alone and without family support than
their heterosexual peers.
French recently started volunteering for
Gay 6c Grey, motivated by her own experience
and need to create her own family as she
grows older.
“Once I found out the program existed, I
got really excited about it,” French says. “I al
ways wanted to help seniors in the Portland
queer community hut didn’t know how to go
about it.”
French’s example is exactly what Gay 6c
Grey leaders want. Program officials are try
ing to raise awareness— this month during
the annual Gay 6c Grey expo— of a plight
they say is largely invisible to others in the gay
population.
“In our community, you’ve got to be hot
and young and hunky,” says Bruce Meisner, a
participant in the program, “and when you get
old, you’re just a dirty old man.”
Gay 6c Grey is attempting to change that
perception.
“Younger generations don’t realize how
much effort has been put in to pave the way to
allow them to walk down the street arm in
arm,” says Mya Chamberlin, head of the Gay
6c Grey program. “We need to honor seniors
and the work they’ve put in.”
“ In o u r c o m m u n ity , y o u ’v e g o t to
b e h o t a n d y o u n g a n d h u n k y, a n d
A Gay & Grey volunteer makes a sign for
Portland Pride 2010.
w h e n yo u g e t o ld , y o u ’re ju s t a
d irty o ld m a n .”
-BRUCE MEISNER
That got the ball rolling for what would
become Gay 6c Grey’s diversity trainings.
If the SH A R E housing program was an at
tempt to find LGBTQjfriendly places for se
niors to live, Gay 6c Grey’s diversity trainings
seek to create more o f those places. Gay 6c
Grey offers these trainings to senior homes,
college classes, social service agencies and
other groups.
Carol French (no relation to Natasha)
wrote the curriculum for the trainings, and
now that she’s retired, she volunteers three-
hour chunks o f her time to present them.
Senior homes and other health care envi
ronments can be intimidating for LGBTQ_
seniors, French says. Senior homes are micro
cosms, like high schools, and often just as
scary.
Brindley, 71.
Brindley and Hall visited their older friend
in a senior home, where the friend told them
she had decided to keep her sexual orientation
a secret.
“You’ve been an L G B T activist,” Brindley
remembers saying to her, “Why are you going
back into the closet?”
Their friend said, “T’m going to spend the
rest of my life here, and I don’t want to be
ostracized, ” Brindley recalls.
So as Brindley and Hall were walking back
to their car, Brindley turned to Hall and said,
“You know, in 10 years, this could be us. We
have to do something.”
“And the ‘doing something’ was starting
“You know, they’re seniors,” she says.
SH A RE," Brindley says.
“They’re set in their ways. They’re not even
The original idea for SH A R E was to pro going to be as open-minded as kids in high
vide affordable housing for LGBTQ_scniors, school.”
but organizers couldn’t manage to raise
The trainings work like this: A presenter
enough funds to purchase a building.
like French first lays out the lesson. It includes,
So today, the housing assessment program for example, information on how partners of
operates as a referral service for seniors look LGBTQ^seniors are often ignored in health
ing for LGBTQT'riendly senior homes. Gay care environments. Other lessons include how