Gay Charlotte and LGBTQ Carolina News, Arts & Entertainment
LGBT seniors offer those of us in the community who have not yet hit our golden years a direct link to the past. They are living reminders of where we have been, full of stories and knowledge that, when tapped, provide a wealth of insight and a heightened awareness of what it means to be lesbian, gay, bi or trans in this day and age.
Finding information and resources during retirement and the golden years is difficult even for the most savvy of seniors. But LGBT elders have a particularly difficult time because until recently there did not appear to be that many resources available to them.
Thirty years in the field of aging in Charlotte gives me an historical perspective on how we’ve done meeting the needs of LGBTQ elders and caregivers. In summary — sporadic at best.
Village Hearth Cohousing has announced that on May 9 its civil engineers, Coulter, Jewell, Thames, PA, submitted annexation and rezoning requests along with development plans to Durham City/County Planning Development in Durham, N.C. The project is for the construction of an LGBT-focused senior living community located 20 minutes from the downtown district on a 15-acre wooded site.
June is heralded as the month that the LGBT rights movement began. Out from the Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn, a band of courageous individuals fought back against the system to demand rights and respect from their community and neighbors.
Ed DePasquale co-founded an early fundraising organization, Carolina Celebration, and talks about life back when it was still illegal to be gay.
In 1819, American author Washington Irving published a short story about a man named Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep under a tree and woke up 20 years later with a long beard in a completely different world. After its release, the story became wildly famous and has since been regarded as an acclaimed part of the United States’ literary history.
In qnotes’ previous issue, I shared that I was invited to attend a “Meet and Greet” with one of the nation’s five Employment Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) commissioners, Charlotte A. Burrows, in the EEOC’s downtown Raleigh, N.C., office. I received the invite since I am an officer of the Raleigh Business and Professional Network, Raleigh’s National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce’s affiliate chapter.
All of us that are LGBT Christians have had a difficult journey in life. We have suffered from persecution and judgment because we are different. That persecution and judgment, whether it be from family, friends, coworkers or strangers, has beaten us down to the point that we frequently question our worth as a person and our worth to our God and Jesus, our Savior.
Pageant season is here. All summer long you will find drag queens competing for prelims and statewide titles on their way to national contests for Miss Gay America, All American Goddess, Entertainer of the Year, USA Unlimited and the list continues.
