Swept Under The Rug

I have been battling over this for a couple of years now... but making slow headway.

As a generation of gay and lesbian people ages, memories of worse — and better — times swirl

AP News

By  ASHRAF KHALIL

June 7, 2025

David Perry recalls being young and gay in 1980s Washington D.C. and having “an absolute blast.” He was fresh out of college, raised in Richmond, Virginia, and had long viewed the nation’s capital as “the big city” where he could finally embrace his true self.

He came out of the closet here, got a job at the National Endowment for the Arts where his boss was a gay Republican, and “lost my virginity in D.C. on August 27, 1980,” he says, chuckling.

The bars and clubs were packed with gay men and women — Republican and Democrat — and almost all of them deep in the closet.

“There were a lot of gay men in D.C., and they all seemed to work for the White House or members of Congress. It was kind of a joke. This was pre-Internet, pre-Facebook, pre-all of that. So people could be kind of on the down-low. You would run into congresspeople at the bar,” Perry says. “The closet was pretty transparent. It’s just that no one talked about it.”

[...]

“It’s really easy for Pride to be about young people and parties,” says Sophie Fisher, LGBTQ program coordinator for Seabury Resources for Aging, a company that runs queer-friendly retirement homes and assisted-living facilities and which organized a pair of Silver Pride events last month for LGBTQ+ people over age 55.

In Connecticut the governor just signed... NewTimes reported that,

Introduced by the state legislature's Aging Committee, proposed HB6913 prohibits discriminatory actions towards residents based on their sexuality, gender identity or human immunodeficiency virus status while living in long-term care facilities. Some of these actions include denying admission to same-sex couples, restricting room assignments and intentionally misgendering residents. 

It also requires facilities to post non-discrimination policies in their building, maintain records of all resident's gender identity, name and pronouns, and promote "bodily privacy" with their personal care. Long-term care facility staff would also be required to attend cultural competency training every two years on caring for residents who are LGBTQ+ or are living with HIV.

The bill was just signed in to law by Governor Lamont.

"People talk about 'they don't want to have to go back into the closet,' and Carol and I've never lived in the closet," Peck said. "So, I don't want to have to feel like we have to go into the closet."