THE SAGE MAGAZINE SAGEMatters is the magazine of SAGE, the country’s largest CONTENTS and oldest nonprofit agency dedicated to serving LGBT older people. Our mission is to take 40TH the lead in addressing issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual ANNIVERSARY and transgender (LGBT) aging. In FEATURES partnership with its constituents and allies, SAGE works to achieve a high quality of life for LGBT 2 older people, supports and CHANGE advocates for their rights, fosters In the a greater understanding of aging in all communities, and promotes Beginning... positive images of LGBT life in A talk with two of SAGE’s later years. fierce founders Chris SAGE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Almvig and Doug Kimmel Executive Committee PHOTOS: DIANA LUNDIN & FRED SPIGELMAN DIANA LUNDIN PHOTOS: Elizabeth F. Schwartz CO-CHAIR “The LGBT community has to Dr. Kevin Williams CO-CHAIR start changing the culture Dr. Charles R. Middleton TREASURER of what it means to be older.” Douglas E. Harris — MISS BARBIE Q SECRETARY William E. Weinberger DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE CHAIR OUR STORIES Members at Large Michael J. Burke 3 David Canter-McMillan Through the Years 6 Lisa Davis Carlene “CJ” Jadusingh A timeline of SAGE Coming Out Trans Chris Kann Notes from trans advocate Bruce J. Lederman history year-by-year Philip Lumpkin since its founding Theo Hutchinson Jim Obergefell Barbara Peda Laurie Peter 18 Cindy T. Rizzo Linda E. Scott Aging in the Americas Elliott R. Sernel Frank Stark A talk with ESMULES’s Roy Wesley Andrea Ayala Jason Young SAGE 305 Seventh Avenue, 15th Floor 8 20 New York NY 10001 212-741-2247 SAGE as Edie’s Legacy sageusa.org Home Introducing the lgbtagingcenter.org Our constituents Edie Windsor SAGEMatters talk about what SAGE Challenge Fund EDITOR Nancy Blaine means to them ART DIRECTOR Christina DaCosta EVENTS CONTRIBUTORS 10 Jerry Chasen Let’s Talk! 22 Alysa Stryker DESIGN Sounding off On the Town Deirdre Reznik, dpi.nyc on LGBT history, culture Celebrating SAGE sageusa.org/sagematters Please help SAGE Go Green. and the road ahead across the country E-mail us if you would prefer to receive SAGEMatters electronically: facebook.com/sageusa twitter.com/sageusa [email protected] [ LETTER FROM THE CEO ] SAGE’s Past, Present, and Future could not be more excited to share this 40th anniversary issue of SAGEMatters! When SAGE was founded in 1978, neither the dramatic progress we have made on LGBT Iequality nor the particularly challenging moment we now face as a nation could have been imagined. Jimmy Carter was president, the modern LGBT rights movement was in its infancy, and the country was recovering from the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War with a new emphasis on ethics and transparency in government. Today, much work must be done to achieve full equality and acceptance for all LGBT people. Nonetheless, we have achieved many historic milestones as a community, with SAGE’s numerous important advances prominent among those 40th anniversary legacy campaign. You’ll read about milestones. Yet our country has plunged into one how the future of SAGE’s work—and the future of our of the darkest eras in decades as a result of the LGBT elder pioneers—is being secured by the leadership in Washington, D.C. Edie Windsor Challenge Fund, and how you can All of this makes SAGE’s 40th anniversary get involved. slogan—40 Fierce Years—particularly poignant. Anybody who is aware of Edie’s legacy knows that It took fierce advocacy by our pioneers—our elders— she always thought big. So as we think about a future to secure so many victories for LGBT equality. of boundless possibilities, it’s only fitting that this Today, we need the wisdom and fierce perseverance issue includes a conversation with Andrea Ayala of of our elders both to protect those gains from current ESMULES, an organization focused on older lesbians attacks and to keep bending the moral arc of the in El Salvador. SAGE is partnering with ESMULES universe toward justice even in the face of renewed and other groups in Latin America to forge a vision ignorance, bigotry, and bankrupt leadership. for LGBT elder rights that extends not only across We hope this issue of SAGEMatters is just the the United States, but all of the Americas. antidote for the current moment, offering wisdom This is the inexorable movement with and on behalf from our history, determination from our present, of our LGBT elders that 40 Fierce Years has forged. and an inspirational vision for our future. Please join SAGE in building that movement so that Wisdom from SAGE’s history jumps off the pages, all of our elders can grow old with the opportunities, including the lively conversation between SAGE dignity, and support they have earned. founders Chris Almvig and Doug Kimmel that I had the privilege to join. Similarly, SAGE’s fierce Sincerely, determination in the current moment emerges from the insights and testimony of today’s LGBT elder justice leaders and advocates throughout the issue. In this issue we double down on our vision of a Michael Adams bright future for LGBT elders by announcing a SAGE CEO 40 FIERCE YEARS | SAGEMatters | 1 SAGE in the Beginning What better way to celebrate 40 Fierce Years than to hear from SAGE’s fierce founders Doug Kimmel and Chris Almvig? Here are some highlights from an interview with SAGE CEO Michael Adams. Michael Adams: For those who rummy or canasta. In my adult Q don’t know about your history, life, I converted that passion into what was your background before action. I dedicated my studies and starting SAGE? my career to gerontological services administration. Doug Kimmel: When I was in CHRIS ALMVIG graduate school back in the 1960s, Michael: What were some of the received NOW’s Susan B. homosexuality was a medical Q biggest challenges and Anthony Award for founding condition that was considered opportunities in founding SAGE? SAGE. Her research “The Invisible a mental illness. I was studying Doug: Well, let me take you back to Minority: Aging & Lesbianism” Human Development and I was (1982), was among the first on 1977. In those days not many of us wondering whether I would be able the lives of older lesbians. could be open about being gay, but to become a licensed psychologist. because I had tenure, I could be. By 1973, the American Psychiatric Chris called and invited me to have Association was persuaded to remove coffee and we started talking about homosexuality from its list of mental this project of hers about providing disorders and so I attended the first services for older LGBT people. Then, meeting of the Association of Gay we organized a meeting at the home DOUG KIMMEL Psychologists. At that time, aging of one of the people that she had been is a SAGE founder and retired was something that wasn’t very talking with who also provided some professor at City College, CUNY popular in the gay community, but I financial support to get us started. (1970-1998). A member of the was studying and teaching aging. I We came up with the name SAGE Maine Psychological Association, decided that it was natural to start at the second meeting. We liked the he founded SAGE Maine. doing research on gay men and aging. sound of it but recognized that this Chris Almvig: I’ve had a lifelong name had been incorporated already interest in older people. I never by a publishing company. So, we had wanted to babysit; I grandma-sat to come up with an acronym that back in the 1950s. There weren’t fit. It was 22-year-old Lee Sullivan any assisted living or retirement who, sitting cross-legged on the floor, MICHAEL ADAMS communities—elders lived at home came up with the idea ‘Senior Action is Chief Executive Officer and so if they wanted to play cards in a Gay Environment.’ It lasted of SAGE and has led the or do something, they would call for decades. We began developing organization for 12 years. on me. I spent hours playing gin protocols for friendly visiting and for 2 | SAGEMatters | 40 FIERCE YEARS Left: Socials and dances got the word out about SAGE in the early years. Below: Chris Almvig at the Gerontological Society of America’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. in 1979. reaching out to these lonely, isolated, today—about bathrooms. She couldn’t older people. We developed trainings go into the men’s bathroom and she 1978 for friendly visitors and we got all this couldn’t go into the women’s bathroom First community meeting in place. But we didn’t have any clients. and I witnessed that she could only leave and Certificate of Nobody came. So we invited the New York home for short periods of time because Incorporation Times to write an article about us. A man she had to come back in order to use named Ron Alexander did a fine article the bathroom. She had a dishonorable but the Times wouldn’t discharge from the army. publish it because, in There was a witch-hunt those days, they wouldn’t and somebody turned her publish anything that was in. She had problems with positive about gay men. My dream was employment all through And then Chris organized to be part of her life just because of a social—a dance—and creating housing the way she looked. So that’s what got the word sometimes people have for the elderly. out. People came and this big impact on you to 1979 danced and began talking Eventually that start understanding the Nation’s first Friendly about SAGE.