Author Archives: Michael Stephens

Resource Center Dallas launches program to address needs of LGBT seniors as community reaches ‘precipice of a pandemic of aging’

NEW AGE OF LGBT SERVICES | Jim LeCroy, 72, stays active by volunteering at the front desk of Resource Center Dallas two days a week. However, he says many other LGBT seniors are isolated, one of the reasons why the center’s Gray Pride program is needed. (Anna Waugh/Dallas Voice)

DAVID TAFFET  |  Staff Writer

Jim LeCroy has a partner and stays active by volunteering at Resource Center Dallas twice a week.

For the last four years, LeCroy has participated in the center’s volunteer-run program for seniors, the GLBT Aging Interest Network, or GAIN.

“I’m out and about,” said LeCroy, 72. “But many [LGBT seniors] don’t have resources and find themselves alone.”

LeCroy said GAIN helps people get out. He’d like to see more social and educational programs but doesn’t want to limit those to the elderly. He wants to help younger people plan ahead for their golden years.

“Some day there will be a cure for HIV,” he said. “Will there ever be a cure for old age?”

To address a range of issues from isolation to housing, the center recently hired a part-time employee, Shelley Hamilton, to oversee the senior program, which has been renamed Gray Pride.

“We’re at the precipice of a pandemic of aging,” Hamilton said.

An ordained Metropolitan Community Church pastor for almost 40 years, Hamilton came to Dallas in the ’90s as Cathedral of Hope’s AIDS chaplain, moved to Wichita, Kan., for 10 years and returned to Dallas seven years ago as COH’s congregational care chaplain.

For the next few months, Hamilton plans to gather data while beginning to offer monthly programming. And she wants to start a dialogue with other agencies rather than reinventing what others in the community already do well.

RETIREMENT COMMUNITY  | Although housing is often cited as the biggest problem for LGBT seniors, everyone’s needs are different. Gay Dallas couple Jack Evans, 83, and George Harris, 79, would like to remain in their home but seek access to services and ways to remain engaged.

Last fall, RCD assessed GAIN and received survey answers from 700 respondents. Added to information gathered from executive directors of LGBT community centers across the country, senior programs became part of the center’s new strategic plan.

CEO Cece Cox said the next step in developing Gray Pride was hiring its first staff member to work specifically on senior issues.

She put isolation at the top of the list.

“Care tends to come from our circle of friends rather than from a bio family,” Cox said of LGBT seniors.

She cited a number of reasons. Gays and lesbians are less likely to have children to care for them. Some are estranged from their biological families. With fewer ties, many have moved away.

“We want to provide more frequent opportunities to get together,” Cox said.

That would deal with isolation and help older people build their support networks.

Counseling would be another component including group peer support.

“Grief is an issue,” she said.

After living through the worst of the AIDS crisis, those approaching old age and already there should have quite a bit of experience with loss. But Cox wonders how many actually learned to grieve and how many simply learned to cope. Many people went from one funeral to another and then returned home to care for someone else living with AIDS.

But that developed a generation of good caregivers. Gray Pride hopes to tap into that experience and connect people.

“Nutrition is an issue in the U.S., but for seniors it gets more complicated,” Cox said.

She said mobility is a problem, both in getting out to buy food and in getting around the house to prepare it.

“Housing is a gigantic issue that comes up,” she said.

But that’s on the long-range to-do list. Cox said the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center is about to do some senior housing and the Chicago center has created some partnerships.

Serena Worthington, director of community advocacy and capacity building for the national LGBT seniors group SAGE, said every city is different and has different needs. But each city must make a specific commitment to its LGBT elders, she added, praising RCD’s effort.

The SAGE Center in New York City offers meditation, dinner, a support group for men living with HIV, films, an acting class, a creative writing workshop, a drawing class and telephone support for homebound elders. And that’s just on Mondays.

“I urge folks to do modest programming but make it sustainable and regular,” Worthington said. “Coffee and conversation.

Pairing a monthly meal with a program.”

Worthington cited housing as a huge problem. With as many as 3 million LGBT seniors around the country, five cities are building properties specifically for this group. The largest are in Philadelphia and Chicago, with just 90 units. Los Angeles is adding 40 units to its existing property.

“We could build now and never keep up,” she said.

But she said the days of gays and lesbians going back into the closet when they enter nursing homes are numbered.

“This generation is less tolerant of being discriminated against,” she said.

The government is paying attention and giving guidance to nursing facilities. And the Human Rights Campaign is working on a nursing home index similar to its Corporate Equality Index.

Worthington thinks nursing homes will improve acceptance and quality of care for LGBT residents fearing a bad rating could scare away business.

Hamilton wants to come up with creative solutions for LGBT elderly housing. She doesn’t believe there’s one solution.

Building an LGBT senior facility from the ground up, she said, would take millions of dollars at a time when RCD is already in the middle of capital campaign for its new home.

Besides, not all seniors have the same housing needs.

For example, Jack Evans, 83, and George Harris, 79, said most of their friends are 20 years younger and Evans continues to work. The couple sold real estate for decades but lost most of their listings when the market began to crash in 2005. They’ve also participated in GAIN programs.

Evans and Harris want to remain in their home as long as possible with access to services and ways to remain engaged.

Hamilton likes the approach used by AIDS Services of Dallas, which has bought existing apartment buildings and renovated them for assisted living.

On her wish list is someone donating a large home for a group of seniors to live communally. And for nursing care, the best fix for the short term is finding an existing facility with staff sensitive to the needs to LGBT elders.

The additional specialties of caring for people living long-term with HIV and medical and social needs of elderly transgenders make that a challenging goal.

Hamilton called establishment of the Gray Pride program an example of visionary thinking.

“I think it’s a courageous step on the part of our executive director,” she said.

For more information call Resource Center Dallas at 214-528-0144 and ask for Shelley Hamilton.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 29, 2013,

—  Michael Stephens

Some say Mayor Mike Rawlings should be more involved after transit agency’s board tables issue until after high court rules on marriage

ANNA WAUGH  |  News Editor

Mike Rawlings

LGBT advocates are regrouping this week after DART’s Board of Directors suspended action on domestic partner benefits until after the U.S. Supreme Court rules in two marriage equality cases.

The board voted 10-1 to hold off on a decision on offering the benefits to opposite- and same-sex partners of employees during a committee-of-the-whole meeting Tuesday, March 26. A similar motion was voted down during a Feb. 26 meeting.

Rafael McDonnell, communications and advocacy manager at Resource Center Dallas, said the lack of leadership at DART has contributed to continued delays in board action, as well as the agency’s “risk-avoidance” culture.

He said Mayor Mike Rawlings needs to take a larger role in working with board members to pass the benefits.

“There’s not a whole lot of internal involvement at DART, so I think it’d be a good thing for the mayor to be a little bit more involved,” McDonnell said.

Paula Blackmon, chief of staff for Rawlings, told Dallas Voice that the mayor has called appointees since discussion began on the issue in October.

“I am in full support of domestic partners benefits and have expressed this point of view to DART members,” Rawlings told Dallas Voice in an email two days after the vote. “I urge the agency to deal with this issue as soon as they can. It is about workforce equality.”

Eight of the 15 DART board members are appointed by the city of Dallas. Four of the eight Dallas appointees voted in favor of the delay.

Blackmon said Tuesday’s vote seemed to have a lot to do with timing as the high court heard oral arguments in California’s Proposition 8 case Tuesday.

“We’re never going to force an appointee on a position,” Blackmon said. “We will approach them on a position and they’ll make up their minds.”

Blackmon said she’ll work with the Resource Center to come up with a new plan of action when the board takes up the issue again in July.

“I plan to reach out to the Resource Center and regroup and figure out where missed opportunities were and where we could’ve capitalized and see if we can get this moving now,” she said.

In addition to Rawlings’ phone calls, Councilwoman Delia Jasso wrote a letter to DART board Chairman John Danish calling for the agency to add DP benefits.

McDonnell said part of the new strategy will be getting more activists to call and email board members to instill a sense of urgency for the issue, as well as have speakers address the issue at every public comment section at board meetings and find LGBT employees to share their stories of how not having the benefits has impacted them.

During the hour-long discussion about the benefits plan before the vote, some board members requested more accurate estimates about the number of employees who would use the benefits and argued against another delay.

Others claimed that the benefits would be illegal in Texas and could be challenged by the  U.S. Supreme Court or the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s opinion on domestic partner benefits expected in May.

Ken Upton, senior staff attorney for Lambda Legal’s Dallas office, said the board’s comments were incorrect and misinformed.

He said domestic partner benefits aren’t illegal in Texas because of how municipalities and companies have worded their insurance policies to not violate the state’s marriage amendment. And while he expects a negative opinion from the attorney general, he said that is an opinion, not a ruling.

As for the Supreme Court, he said that the issue of domestic partner benefits isn’t being addressed. He said the federal Defense of Marriage Act case would only affect the federal government’s recognition of same-sex marriage. Upton said the Prop 8 ruling would only affect Texas if the court rules that all state marriage amendments are unconstitutional.

“It’s not justified on those grounds for sure,” Upton said about the delay. “That’s just silly.”

Patti Fink, president of Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance, told the board during the public comments section after the vote that she was “taken aback by the level of ignorance on this board on this issue.”

“I encourage you to educate yourself and take advantage of the resources we have in our community to bring yourself up to speed because this is shocking that you’re going to wait for a Supreme Court of the United States decision, which has nothing to do and no impact on this decision,” Fink said.

“I’m concerned and I’m angry that this board is not acting. And we’ll be back to talk to you about this again and again and again.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 29, 2013,

—  Michael Stephens

Robert Moore, ‘pioneer of local LGBT media’ who co-founded weekly newspaper in 1984, sells company to 2 longtime employees

HANDING OVER THE REINS | Robert Moore, center, is selling Voice Publishing Company Inc. — the parent company to Dallas Voice, the Dallas Voice Yellow Pages and online product developer Digital Seltzer — to longtime employees Terry Thompson, left, and Leo Cusimano. (Arnold Wayne Jones/Dallas Voice)

ANNA WAUGH  |  News Editor

Dallas Voice co-founder and longtime publisher Robert Moore’s tireless work and commitment to the LGBT community over the decades have made him an institution in himself.

Moore, 57, announced his retirement this week after almost 29 years at the paper and more than 1,500 issues, making him one of the longest-serving publishers at an LGBT publication.

He plans to spend time traveling and exploring other cultures, beginning with a biking trip in the south of Spain in May.

“I want to get out of the bubble. I want to get off the beaten track,” he said. “I just have this hunger, this passion, for seeing places and going places I have never been before.”

Moore also announced this week that he is selling Voice Publishing Company Inc. — the parent company to Dallas Voice, the Dallas Voice Yellow Pages and online product developer Digital Seltzer — to longtime employees Leo Cusimano and Terry Thompson.

After working at Dallas Gay News for two years, Moore started Dallas Voice with Don Ritz and William Marberry in 1984. The three each put in $250 and began to put the paper together week-by-week in a small Oak Lawn office, not knowing what to expect.

For the first year, Ritz and Moore planned the paper and Marberry in Houston would put it together using a printer in Galveston. The paper would ride the Greyhound bus on Friday mornings, and the two back in Dallas would distribute it.

“It was a bare-boned, shoestring operation,” Moore recalls.

Moore and Ritz later bought out Marberry and moved the operations to Dallas. The two remained business partners until Ritz left the business in 1998 after battling HIV for a number of years. When Ritz died in 2001, Moore became the sole owner.

Ritz’s departure to spend his time in good health doing what he dreamed of doing has been an inspiration to Moore, who said he’s now ready to move on.

“He had three years of being free and being able to do what he wanted to do. That’s not very long. I think about that,” Moore said. “I am still young enough and fit enough that I have a lot of time left, I hope, as long as a DART bus doesn’t get me, so I’m afforded that opportunity.”

Moore has seen the progression of LGBT issues from the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and the rise of activism during that time to the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and anti-sodomy laws with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling them unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.

“I have been there at the absolute worst of the AIDS crisis when anytime you read the word celebration it was a sad word because you knew that the next part of that was a celebration of life for someone who had left us,” Moore said.

Reflecting on his time at Dallas Voice, Moore said he was also greatly affected by the story of State District Judge Jack Hampton, who sentenced a murderer to a lighter sentence in 1988 because his victims were gay, and the election of the first openly gay Dallas City Councilman Craig McDaniel in 1993.

Over the decades, Moore’s seen the paper through a lot of changes, from paper size and a growing staff to several redesigns and technological upgrades, all while maintaining journalistic integrity in its coverage.

“From the very beginning, we decided to trust our readers and simply tell them the story, give them the facts, and allow them to form their own opinions,” Moore said. “It was very important to me and to Don that the Voice did not become our personal soapbox.”

Stories of Moore’s time at Dallas Voice mention his even temper, witty personality and wise business judgment of a young man who grew into his own at a company he started with a little bit of money and lot of community support.

Philadelphia Gay News Publisher Mark Segal called Moore “one of the great LGBT publishers” and “a professional from the start and a pioneer of local LGBT media.”

Tracy Baim, publisher of Windy City Times, said Moore has “always been a focused, professional voice of reason in the landscape of gay media.”

“Those involved in this niche have tended to be large personalities that often clashed with one another,” Baim said. “But Robert always seems to be the calm in the middle of the storm. His voice will be missed in our gay media gatherings.”

Bob Witeck, president of the Washington, D.C.-based LGBT marketing company Witeck Communications Inc., called Moore “one of those rare, and too often unsung heroes in our community.”

“His tenure at the Dallas Voice has made him the glue in that community, and he has spent the last three decades (and more) serving our unquenched appetite for news and knowledge,” Witeck said. “It is good to know he’s just changing directions, and earning some rewards for the sizeable contributions he’s made.”

Todd Evans, president and CEO of Rivendell Media, said he’s not surprised Moore is retiring because LGBT media is often more challenging than mainstream media because of the issues of equality that are confronted on a daily basis.

“This business is a labor of love because there are so many things that can get you down,” he said, adding that Moore has overcome those challenges to make the publication a staple in LGBT media. “Robert has made Dallas Voice essential to Dallas and to Texas.”

Cece Cox, CEO at Resource Center Dallas, said she remembers Dallas Voice linking her to the LGBT community when she first moved to Dallas in 1984.

She said Moore’s dedication to LGBT news has provided “a really valuable service to the community.”

“It provided a way to put my life in a context of the larger world. And it still does,” Cox said. “Robert’s part of that legacy and he’s continued that legacy.”

Don Maison, president and CEO at AIDS Services of Dallas, said Dallas Voice has come a long way in the years since it started because of the strong leadership.

“They started with nothing. Virtually nothing,” Maison said. “And now he’s got a well-run, well-respected company.”

As for turning the company over to Cusimano and Thompson, Moore said the two have often run things during his extensive travels over the last five years and he knows they’re ready.

“I think for the Voice as an institution it was time for me to go and turn it over to two other people who have a real enthusiasm for this place and are dedicated to this place and the community that we serve,” he said.

Cusimano has worked at Dallas Voice for 21 years. Currently advertising director, he will become publisher. Thompson, promotions manager, has been with the company for 10 years and will be president.

Cusimano said Moore will be greatly missed but his time at Dallas Voice isn’t over, as he’ll become a consultant to the company.

“It’s this bittersweet kind of thing where I want to see him follow his dream, but I’ll miss him dearly,” Cusimano said. “It’s up to us to set the direction of the company, but it’ll be helpful to have Robert in the wing to ensure we have that additional support.”

Thompson said he believes that the local LGBT community will always have a need for LGBT media. He expects the company to continue to thrive and grow with the support and commitment of the staff.

“There will always be a market for niche media. We’ll continue to focus on what’s important to our readers, which is the LGBT market, and report on local news,” he said.

Candy Marcum, Stonewall Behavorial Health founder, wrote an advice column for the paper for several years in the ’80s and again in 2000. She said that Moore has grown up with the business and his choice of successors is an evolution for the company.

“The paper is changing ownership, but a lot of the history and institutional knowledge is staying,” Marcum said. “I feel some sadness because he’s the last of the original guys, but I feel hopeful of the future leadership because they are a hybrid of historical perspective and the future.”

While Moore is ready to embark on new adventures when his retirement begins April 1, he remains immensely grateful to the LGBT community for their enduring support over the years.

“The city and the community here have been really good to me and I’m very grateful for my life here and the support that we’ve had through the years. And I’m extremely proud of the LGBT community here,” Moore said.

“There are a lot of small stories about groups and institutions here that when taken together paint a picture of a community that’s come a long way and has matured and is still growing and active.”

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 29, 2013,

—  Michael Stephens