Life Before Death: Exploring Long-Term Care Institutions and Life-Affirming Care for LGBT & Queer Seniors


Hannah Crouse, Dalhousie University

Traditional theories of aging are being re-examined as we strive to create social policies, and care models, that can support increased demand for long-term care. Given that our care institutions are fundamentally shaped by heteronormativity, LGBT and queer older adults are systematically excluded from supports that could facilitate their transition and inclusion in long-term care (Sussman et al., 2018). As the baby boomer generation – and LGBT and queer members of this cohort, whom Ramirez Valles (2016) playfully calls gay by boomers – move into long-term care, it is important to consider their unique historical location, as they came of age during the gay liberation movement, creating the first cohort of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Therefore, our care systems must adopt inclusive policies and models of care, that recognize the cultural context of gayby boomers as they begin to move into long-term care. While there is ample literature on aging, demonstrating its complex, cultural, social, and temporal nature, there is limited social science literature concerning aging LGBT adults. Some social scientists propose that this gap in the literature is a product of “rhetorical silencing, whether intentional or as a by-product of discourse, that renders elders invisible in queer theory and queerness invisible in aging or gerontological theory” (brown, 2009, p. 66). Further, LGBT communities are historically less intergenerational, as we “nearly lost an entire generation” due to the hiv/aids crisis, severely reducing the number of LGBT elders (Bitterman and Hess, 2020; Weststrate et al., 2023). The survivors of this crisis have been largely invisible due to the pervasive stigma that has kept them “safely” in their closets and hidden away from younger people (Fredriksen-Goldsen, 2016, as cited in Weststrate et al., 2023). This loss of nearly an entire generation, alongside pervasive stigma that invisibilizes survivors of the crisis, has made LGBT intergenerational relationships rare, which may amplify their exclusion from queer and aging theories (brown, 2009). As a result, research on LGBT aging has only significantly advanced in the last couple of decades. The unique dual silencing, first of age in queer theory, and, second a silencing of queerness in theories of aging, has left LGBT older adults “physically and socially isolated from both the LGBT and older-adult communities, as well as the care organizations serving those communities” (brown, 2009, p. 66; Twigg, 2004). Historically, “senior services” in north America have denied openly lesbian and gay seniors, stating that they would “not be welcome at senior centres in their area” (Cahill and south, 2002, p. 50). Further, LGBT older adults have experienced bias from medical professionals, such as being subject to anti-LGBT rhetoric or limiting their access to health coverage from a partner’s work benefits (Cahill and South, 2002). Given these care organizations include healthcare, they, by extension, include long-term care (ltc). Ergo, older LGBT adults confront fears and experiences of queerphobia upon moving into ltc, making them subject to potential dehumanization in their final years. This paper will present findings from my qualitative ma thesis. Through employing participant observation and conducting interviews with LGBT residents of a large long-term care home in Atlantic Canada, my project is designed to answer the following research questions: first, how do older LGBT adults describe their experience living in long-term care; and how, specifically, do they describe their sexual identity as influencing these experiences? Second, how can long-term care homes better support LGBT and queer residents? In answering these questions, my project aims to fill a gap in LGBT aging research and to draw attention to the lived experiences of older LGBT adults residing in long-term care.

This paper will be presented at the following session: