Gays look toward sanctuaries in retirement

The golden years aren't what they used to be. Especially if you're gay.

Gay and lesbian boomers who've spent decades living and loving in the open are looking to age among others like them.

"When we ask, 'Who do we want to surround ourselves with when we retire?,' it is like-minded people," said Tina Reynolds, a 60-year-old lesbian who owns a multimedia firm in Sacramento, Calif. "We have to take care of each other."

Around the country, at least a dozen gay-oriented retirement communities have opened or are on the drawing board, offering affordable urban living in Los Angeles and Boston or sprawling, market-rate desert resorts. Some, like the planned "openhouse" project in San Francisco, eventually will offer services for those who no longer can care for themselves.

The Sacramento region's first licensed assisted-care facility for gays and lesbians opened recently and can accommodate six. But no active-retirement community is slated for north-central California -- yet.

Over a beer at a restaurant, Reynolds offered her vision of what will happen in Sacramento: a small cluster of condos near gay-oriented restaurants and nightspots. Kind of how she lives now. "I hear enough talk about this in my circle," Reynolds said.

The idea of community is paramount for sexual minorities who have no children or are estranged from their families, she said: "We really choose our family."

Because the U.S. census does not specifically ask sexual preferences, researchers rely on estimates of sexual minorities based on same-sex households. Of 108,000 California same-sex couples, for example, 16 percent of people in those couples are 55 or older, according to the latest census.

By one researcher's count, an estimated 1.3 million of California adults are gay, lesbian or bisexual, though more than half of those are bisexual. Nationally, 4 percent of adults identify themselves as gay or lesbian.

Groundbreaking legislation paved the way for integrated living after the 1969 Stonewall Inn protests against police harassment in New York City. But sexual minorities seem eager for more retirement and nursing-care options catering to them, researchers say.

"The headline is that nobody wants to go back into the closet when they get old," said Douglas Kimmel, a Maine psychologist who has written on lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual aging.

That's not to say everyone will solely seek exclusively gay and lesbian retirement- or nursing-home options. "We need a variety of options," Kimmel said. He emphasized the importance of training health-care workers to meet the physical, legal and human-rights needs of an aging, diverse population.

On a secluded hilltop in the Sacramento County community of Fair Oaks, Tisa Cadway has turned her sprawling ranch home into a bed-and-breakfast-style retreat. Only the intercom in the antiques-appointed bedrooms hints at the extra care offered.

Cadway, 34, opened Camellia Assisted Living in October. She was inspired to start the service by her 60-year-old mother, a lesbian.

Ruth Cadway, who can chase after her year-old grandson in the house, said she's lived openly and comfortably. But she and her friends feel the need for what her daughter is doing. "It's nice to have a loving, warm place without prejudice," she said.

A generation ago, no states had laws protecting sexual minorities, said Gregory Herek, a psychology professor at the University of California-Davis. Many, including California, do today. But "it's not as though prejudice and discrimination have gone away."

Aging gays and lesbians encounter other disadvantages, such as no inherited Social Security for couples, and compounded legal expenses to ensure inheritance, Herek said.

Even with disparities in the states' protections, gay and lesbian retirees seem to mirror the general population by clustering in Florida, the arid climes of Arizona and Nevada and the Oregon coast, said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at UCLA. The institute conducts public-policy research on sexual orientation.

Reynolds said she feels vital enough to crank out another 15 years at work. But it's not too early for a wish list. "It's like everyone else," she said. "You want to have the same culture and lifestyle so you can go on the way you always have."

(E-mail M.S. Enkoji at menkoji(at)sacbee.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)