Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: We Are So Focused At One End Of The Spectrum

Sunday, September 08, 2024

We Are So Focused At One End Of The Spectrum

That we forget our senior citizens… the attacks by the right focuses on youth be those of us are the other end of the age spectrum also are being discriminated against and isolated in Long Term Care facilities (LTC).

Fenway Health commends MA House and Senate for including LGBTQ+ Long Term Care Bill of Rights in An Act to improve quality and oversight of long-term care
August 30, 2024

Fenway Health and other LGBTQ+ aging advocates commended the Massachusetts House and Senate for including language enumerating protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) older adults and older people living with HIV in long-term care facilities. The state legislature voted August 29, 2024 to approve "An Act to improve quality and oversight of long-term care" (House, No. 5033) and send it to Governor Healey's desk to be signed into law.

The LTC oversight legislation includes language from "An Act to establish an LGBTQI Long Term Care Facility Bill of Rights," based on legislation (H.637 and S.381) introduced earlier this legislative session by Representative Jack Lewis (D-Framingham) and Senator Pat Jehlen (D- Somerville), Chair of the Senate Elder Affairs Committee and co-chair of the Massachusetts Special Legislative Commission on LGBT Aging.

We are the Stonewall generation but now we don’t even get a pat on the back, we are just ignored.

"I vividly remember testimony at one of our LGBT Aging Commission hearings," said Senator Jehlen. "A family in western Massachusetts could no longer care for their transgender aunt and could not find a single nursing home that would admit her. Finally, they found one. And that nursing home ironically put her in a converted closet."

As far as I know there is only one LGBTQ+ center in Connecticut that has a program for seniors. How many LGBTQ organizations have any retirees on their Board of Directors.

I knew of a trans woman in a 400 bed LTC where she was being shunned by the other residents. I tried to help but there is nothing, nothing in Connecticut for LGBTQ+ seniors who are in need of assistance in Connecticut. Need help in finding a help?

For me right now it is hard for me to walk any long distances and I'm limited in what I can do. when most retirees are enjoying their senior years we still have to fight for our rights.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Sunday, September 08, 2024

We Are So Focused At One End Of The Spectrum

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