Sage Advice: Conversations with LGBT elders
Four human forms — two of men and two of women — congregate in Christopher Park across the street from the momentous Stonewall Inn in Lower Manhattan. Part of a sculpture titled “Gay Liberation,” the bright, white life-size statues pose unremarkably as if gathered in casual conversation, evoking a time and a place when it was in fact dangerous for LGBT people to do something so simple in public — it carried the risk of arrest under local indecency laws. The sculpture by the late artist George Segal offers LGBT visitors the opportunity to reflect upon and appreciate the scope of LGBT history, as well as their own personal stories.
It was at these statues Kent Schnurbusch finally and fully allowed himself to do just that.
“Tears and profound emotion came to me as I experienced gratitude and appreciation for the journey that has unfolded on behalf of LGBT individuals, as well as our community as a whole,” Schnurbusch said. “Had it not been for those brave men and women [of Stonewall], I possibly would have gone to the grave with my secret.”
At 67, Schnurbusch is handsome, refined, well-spoken and open; he is comfortable speaking his wisdoms and of his past. It is hard to imagine he was ever anything but. However, his journey as an out gay man is still relatively green. Schnurbusch verbalized for the first time that he is gay in his late 50s.
“After a life-threatening experience, what I realized was an urgency to finally be ‘in my truth’ and to begin living a life of integrity on my own behalf,” he shared. “The only one being shortchanged was myself.”
Schnurbusch is no longer shortchanging himself. He is out, actively part of the LGBT community and is ready to tell his story. And he has found the perfect outlet to do so in the Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) of the Rockies writing group “Telling Your Story.”
The members of “Telling Your Story” meet weekly to share poetry and prose on preplanned prompts. This week’s theme is “Endless Joy.” Some pieces are comedic, some lyrical, some depressing and cynical (some even more so about next week’s theme, “All My Exes Live in Texas”), and all are beautiful. Such describes the members of the writing group, themselves. Ranging in age from 62 to 88, the group in the room is certainly not lacking in personality and charisma.
And while aging is not necessarily the focus of this LGBT elders writing group, they do not shy away from the subject.
“I am aging, but I do not feel aged,” said Schnurbusch.
His peers agree, sharing they still feel as though they are full of life, love, and, today’s writing prompt, endless joy.
“My grandparents were old and my parents got old, but I am not old,” said Margaret, 76. “I embrace the time that I am in, and I enjoy it. I would not want to be young. I am very happy with where I am right now.”
Ray, the eldest of the group at 88, asserts that he is “not in denial about aging,” but has also chosen to live and affirm his experience as an older gay man.
“Now is what really counts,” he said. “I know plenty of people who are already dead, because they feel they are just old.”
Gillian Edwards, 71, may have joked that “no one in the group is actually aging,” but she also has no hang ups or trepidations about getting older.
“You can call me ‘old,’ you can call me a ‘senior,’” Edwards said. “But I hope I am aging gracefully!”
And she is.
Serving as the group’s substitute moderator for the day, she is a remarkable writer, sassy, humorous and warm. Like Schnurbusch and many others in her generation, which Schnurbusch described as a “generation that grew up in the closet,” Edwards came out when she was middle aged.
“I was 45. It suddenly hit my consciousness what I was and had always been,” she said of her experience, “I was simply swept away. It was wonderful. I was finally the person I was born to be.”
![“Many [LGBT seniors] have just come out. There is a place for us, and that’s so important to know.” — Ray, 88](https://d2pe3g8unpp9ma.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/03154235/Ray1.jpg)
“…I think because at some subconscious level I knew, or feared, that by then it would be too late to escape from this artificial reality I had trapped myself in,” she said. “Or perhaps it was the opposite; I feared that without work to distract me, that whisper inside me would become a scream I could no longer ignore.”
More than two and a half decades later, Edwards has defied the expectations from her youth. In November 2013, she married her partner of more than 26 years. “Pure bliss” is how she describes her life now, one in which she is a wedded woman and an out and older lesbian.
She believes, passionately, that being out is easier in one’s golden years.
“There are many great things about being older. Being out is easier. I can be much more relaxed about my sexuality,” she emphatically declared.
Those in attendance at the writing group expressed similar sentiments.
“Gay seniors are really very lucky,” said Randy Wren, 62. “We aren’t trapped in the same trappings others are.”
“All of us struggled with being ‘different,’ and coming out did prime us for other challenges, including aging,” said Ron Zutz, 62. “(Senior LGBT individuals) are more willing to take chances and accept challenges because we already took on a very big one.”
I realized that relationships have an emotional context at least as valuable as the physical. I found that a man’s inner core informs his attractiveness, while a man’s appearance offers few clues as to what he’s like to be with. I experienced long-term relationships with great emotional and, by the way, sexual joy. As my social circles expanded, I met gay men with a greater variety of backgrounds and perspectives.
Being 62 is different than I could have imagined at 22. I am not bound by the gay stereotypes of the 60s. There are more possibilities than I could have imagined.” — Ron Zutz, 62
Zutz wore pastels to the group, a yellow and blue sweater that looked like spring and served as a welcomed retreat from the cold and snow outside. Unlike the others in the SAGE writing group, he did not write his story down ahead of time, but instead chose to share an extemporaneous tale about a recent trip to Las Vegas. His smile is winsome and his wit is cheeky.
“Before I get started, I want to warn everyone that I am undergoing multiple medication adjustments — which would have meant something entirely different back in the day,” he jabbed at the young Out Front staff in the room.
Even merely going off of the fun and frisky color of his clothing and his gutsy banter, it’s not hard to guess that Zutz has lived a life no holds barred. Zutz has been living as an out and proud gay man for four decades. He came out at the age of 23 after attending a Boston pride parade in 1974.
“Many participants wore wrap-around sunglasses, so they would not be identifiable in news reports. Some had paper bags over their heads,” he recalled. “That was the moment that I made a gut decision not to walk though life with a paper bag over my head.”
He bumped into his sixth grade teacher that same day and told her the secret he had been harboring. He followed his initial coming out up with a visit home to speak his truth with his family. Unfortunately, they weren’t as accepting as his teacher had been, but their reactions did not deter him from living authentically.
“From that moment, whenever I faced a choice between the closet or the truth, coming out won,” he said.
Zutz has seen a lot of changes in the near 40 years since he’s been out. These changes have been both personal observation about what it means to identify as gay, as well as what the political landscape looks like for LGBT people. Although he asserts that the tightness of the small, close-knit urban communities of the early gay rights movement are no longer present, he is happy that identifying as gay is now less about sex and stereotypes (Zutz chided early depictions of LGBT life, “Think of Boys in the Band, which showed men living gay lives, yet with a core numbness.”), and more about a group of people with a collective, “shared experience.”
“Being LGBT used to define me as a member of a fringe, unwanted element of society. Today LGBT defines me as a member of one of many diverse groups in our society. For a long time, my sexuality was shameful. Today I take pride in being queer,” added Zutz.
Zutz’s refusal to live in the closet, even when the times all but demanded for it, is his courageous contribution to the fight for LGBT equality. Otherwise, he admits he is not one for marching in the streets.
“I spent the 80s in rural New Hampshire, (which is) not a hotbed for gay activism,” he said, explaining that the Vietnam-era left him with a case of cause fatigue.
But he does has high hopes for the community’s future. Zutz envisions a future wherein one’s sexuality does not require a special and often stressful coming out, LGBT high school kids will feel comfortable dating and partaking in all of the other coming of age experiences had by their heterosexual peers and where obtaining marriage, employment, and other equalities is not contingent upon being heteronormative.
Zutz’s peers are equally optimistic about the future of LGBT rights, as they are already impressed by its momentum. Many never envisioned being able to be out, proud and vocal, let alone live to see the day when same-sex marriage became a real, viable thing.
“So much of what we might hear in the media is disheartening, but we are living in such a wonderful time,” said Carlos, a 72-year-old professor of English. Carlos recently entered a civil union with his partner, and said the support he received from his colleagues and other acquaintances was both overwhelming and a welcomed tell-tale of tremendous progress.
“The Earth is tipping, and it’s fabulous,” assented Wren.
And as the community and society at large continues to evolve, the SAGE writing group has a few words of wisdom for young LGBT people as they consider life, love, aging and change.
Zutz wants his LGBT juniors to acknowledge they are attractive and worthy, while Edwards feels it is important to embrace life as it comes.
“There are as many positives in it as negatives, possibly even more,” she said.
Finally, Schnurbusch beautifully contributed that authenticity is paramount:
“Be and express your authentic self. Never doubt the beauty of who you are knowing that there is a community that does accept you and who will support you. It does get better. It is the fear of not being enough that keeps one small. When we do not live from a sense of worthiness there are consequences for the individual, those involved in the individual’s life, as well as the community. The challenge is to become a leader, if only in your personal life. As the leader of your life, your experience of the world changes.”
However, such sage advice is not to be taken as a signal that this generation is ready to pass the torch. Our community is lucky to still know and have many of its pioneers, and our pioneers have not yet lost the very vitality that made them such.
“We can say without reservation who we truly are,” concluded Margaret. “I know who the hell I am, and I worked hard to get here. We are survivors.”
For more information on the SAGE of the Rockies writing group, “Telling Your Story,” or to read the works of its participants, please visit sageoftherockies.blogspot.com. For other questions about SAGE of the Rockies and resources available to LGBT seniors, please visit
glbtcolorado.org/sage.
Photos by Hans Rosemond.
