3 LGBT seniors and 1 youth: Here are their coming out stories
LGBTQ+ youth are coming out younger. Here are some coming out stories from a generation before.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Coming out is never easy, but before the 1960s, it was illegal to be gay. Even as recently as 1952, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance in its diagnostic manual. We interviewed three LGBT seniors and one youth on the difference in their coming out experiences.
"I'm 75 years old and I came out as a gay man two years ago," says Jim Kisthardt an LGBTQ+ senior who only came out after his wife of 51 years passed away in 2020.
Coming out is never easy but before the 1960s, it was still illegal to be gay.
"Times were very different. Being gay would be a curse. Being gay was one of the worst things you could bring to your family, worse than divorce," Kisthardt says.
He said that people who came out in the 1950s and 1960s would be ostracized and would have to move away.
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He said telling his parents in those days was never an option.
"I just thought it would've killed them so no, I put that out of my mind entirely," he says.
It was only in July 1961 that Illinois became the first state to decriminalize homosexuality by repealing its sodomy laws.
Even as recently as 1952, the American Psychiatric Association diagnosed homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance.
In the mid-1970s, Rae Lynne Black wanted to join her local county sheriff's department.
"I actually made it to the department and of course, as soon as they found out that I was living with a woman, they decided that they had to send me to a psychiatrist to make sure that I wasn't gay. At that point in time, I decided this is not something I want to put up with for the rest of my working career. So I decided that I would not become a police officer and I left the academy," she said.
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Sharon Long and Rae Lynne Black met in college at California State University Long Beach but had to keep an extremely low profile on their relationship for most of their lives.
"I never really just came out and told somebody I'm gay," Long says.
On September 6, 2005, California became the first state to pass a bill allowing marriage between same-sex couples.
The couple got married a few years after.
"We've been together for 46 years. We got married in 2008," Long says.
"I kept crying through the whole thing because I never thought we'd be able to ever get married. So it was tears of joy. The woman who married us kept saying you got to stop crying, you're gonna make me cry."
All three seniors now live in Fountaingrove Lodge, the nation's first LGBTQ+ and ally retirement community.
LGBTQ+ senior housing wasn't even an option before 2014, when Fountaingrove Lodge opened its doors in Santa Rosa, California.
