Every June, the LGBTQ community celebrates Pride month. And the festivities wouldn't exist without the elders who blazed the trail for civil rights.
On Saturday, older members of the community can celebrate at Silver Pride in Sarasota.
WUSF's Cathy Carter recently spoke with the event's organizers, Jason Champion of Project Pride SRQ and Erin McLeod of the Senior Friendship Centers.
Erin, Senior Friendship Centers is hosting the Silver Pride event on Saturday. But before we talk about that, I'm wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about the unique challenges specific to the LGBTQ senior community.
Ageism, is pretty pervasive and pretty accepted as an 'ism' in our society. And when someone is in the LGBTQ population, they have an added layer of bias that they have to deal with. I'll give you a really good example, when someone is in a caregiver role, they often have family and friends that they are able to turn to as their support network. For many in this older LGBTQ population, they came out when it was not accepted. They were pioneers, and made it possible for the generations today to have the freedoms they have. But for many, they gave up and sacrificed having familial relationships.
And you've said that even for LGBTQ seniors that have partners who can help them navigate the system, there's still some bias in some of our institutions.
I had conversations with a couple of friends who it became very clear that in their caregiving role, it made sense for them to place their partner in assisted living or skilled nursing because it became medically necessary. And the pushback I got was, ‘we're not going back in the closet’. And I said, you mean, that's really a thing still? And they said, yeah, it's still a thing. So, in the institutions we have out there, there's still a lot of bias and a lot of prejudice about people that identify as LGBTQ+.
And the Senior Friendship Centers recognize that. You've had programs for LGBTQ seniors for quite some time starting off with a grief and loss support group. But you've expanded since. What other programs can gay seniors take advantage of?
So, we have the grief and loss support group, but now we've added a caregiver support group because many are still actively caregiving. We have a book club, an LGBTQ book club. We also have reformed our social group. There was a social group that was meeting once a month with activities and potlucks. We hit pause on that during the pandemic, but it's back now. So little by little, we're doing those things. We were so thrilled to be able to work with the local pride group and bring the first ever Silver Pride to the community, and we hosted that here at Senior Friendship Centers.
Well, that's a good time to talk to Jason Champion now of Project Pride. The first Silver Pride was held last year. How did it go?
When we designed Silver Pride, we didn't really know what the outcome was going to be. And we had vendors set up, we had the venue looking beautiful, everybody was pumped and jazzed, and it was about 11:45 and we were like, oh, who's coming? We didn't even think about that. And we're like, we don't even know what the response is going to be. So, all of a sudden, Plymouth Harbor’s bus pulled up, the public transportation SCAT bus pulled up and all these elder LGBTQ individuals jumped out, popped up their walkers and snake chained all the way up to the front door. And it just turned out to be the sleeper hit of Pride. We were so excited to see the numbers of what we had last year of about 500 attendees. And this year, we know we're going to probably hit 750 to 900.
So, what can folks listening right now look forward to at Silver Pride this Saturday?
Fun, love, entertainment, music, food, awesome vendors providing services that specifically cater to the elder LGBT community, places that we know that we can be safe in our elder years. So, when you're able to have an event that people can come out and celebrate just who they are, and having a good time, it goes back to our mission at Project Pride which is one heart, one mind at a time.
