Older LGBTQ+ share struggle that made the Capital safer for queer people, offer advice
Anna Schlecht knew she was a lesbian when she first had language. At 3, she told her mother she was in love with Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz.” She was going to marry her when she grew up.
Her parents wouldn’t have any of that sort of talk at the time, and they fought against Schlecht’s queerness.
Schlecht now has been fighting for the rights of LGBTQ+ people and other mis- and under-represented communities in Olympia for nearly 50 years. At 67, she and Steve O’Connor, 65, her co-chair of the Sound Alliance of Older LGBTQ+ (SAOL), look back on what it took for them to live out and proud, and how Olympia has become more welcoming to queer people.
“We’re not finished by any means,” O’Connor said. “And it’s not easy by any means.”
From the Midwest to the Northwest
Schlecht, from Madison, Wisconsin, said her parents worked with her on gender assignment, reminding her that mothers are women, fathers are men, and she’s a girl who will one day be with a boy.
She said it really messed her up. She’s still not sure what her gender identity might have been if her parents didn’t put her through what they did. Back then, identifying as transgender didn’t seem like a choice for her. So she bided her time and at 17, as soon as she could move out, she did.
“So I identified as a political bisexual because in my mind it was a forerunner to the term ‘queer,’ which is all inclusive,” she said. “And then a friend of mine said, ‘This is just a pile of (expletive). You only want to sleep with women. Come on, you’re a lesbian.’ I said, ‘OK, well yeah, you’re right.’ So I kind of was out my entire life.”
It wasn’t until later in life that her parents tried to atone for their misguided efforts in her childhood. But they did.
Schlecht moved to Olympia soon after leaving home, but it wasn’t any more welcoming to queer people than Madison. She said the country was still divided after the Stonewall riots, and even the idea of creating a safe space seemed impossible. But she found her people nonetheless.
She and other lesbians in Olympia shared housing, created workspaces together and shared each other’s cars. Schlecht has lived in the same house for more than 45 years, a place that has seen generations of women helping raise children together.
“It was kind of natural for lesbians and trans women to focus on the needs of children as the core elements of a chosen family,” she said. “Our house was just packed with as many as five kids at any given time.”
The women started a number of lesbian carpenter collectives, she said. The first was called Janes of All Trades, a play on Jack of All Trades. The second was Nozama, a play on Amazon.
Schlecht said the women always found support in Olympia, but they still had trouble finding people who would hire them to work on their houses. They ended up working on a lot of houses of friends and relatives. Then Schlecht went to work for the city of Olympia on housing and homelessness issues.
Pride in Olympia
Schlecht said it felt like there was a nationwide shift in the early 1990s in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that moved the queer community forward.
“Our community had gone through HIV/AIDS and was still going through it and we decided, ‘we’re going to die in the closet,’” she said. “We have to come out, we have to fight for our rights. Nobody’s going to fight for you.”
In 1991 she helped found Capital City Pride, the first small-town festival outside the now-50-year-old Seattle Pride festival. She was helped by a group of students at The Evergreen State College and Lacey drag queens.
“We realized it took as much effort to carpool to Seattle Pride as it did to (establish) our own,” Schlecht said.
She said the city of Olympia and the state have always been partners in organizing Pride, but it’s smaller organizations and individuals who continue to threaten the festival. The group has had to employ marshalls to keep people safe and protesters within their rights. People still show up with triple-decker signs with religious, anti-gay messages written across them.
“People are like, ‘Really, you have to do that here? Can’t you just go to Seattle or somewhere else and go do your gay thing out of town?’” she said. “No, we live here.”
Even the Sound Alliance of Older LGBTQ+ gets hate, Schlecht said. Sometimes their luncheons will be met with folks walking up to tables and sharing their unwanted beliefs.
How accepting is Olympia?
O’Connor said not all religious people share anti-gay beliefs. He moved to the west side of Olympia from Los Angeles a year ago, and works for St. John’s Episcopal, a South Capitol church he says is extremely welcoming.
He said he has found Olympia to be welcoming to not just LGBTQ+ people, but to minority people, those with disabilities, and aging people. And there are nearly a dozen faith-based organizations that he’s seen work with groups who serve underrepresented communities, and take those people in directly.
“I come from that side of the world, the helping side of the world,” O’Connor said. “I see a lot of that happening in general, but especially in Olympia, and I’m pretty proud of that. I think it speaks a tremendous amount about the work that’s been done in the last 50 years. “
Schlecht said some members of SAOL said they intentionally moved to Olympia because it’s so friendly. One of them said he moved from South Carolina after seeing Gov. Jay Inslee raise the Pride flag on the Capitol Campus nine years ago.
SAOL alone has a mailing list of more than 500 people. Some of the group’s get-togethers see dozens of people, if not hundreds. And Capital City Pride draws crowds of thousands.
“We’re in a different day now for the queer community in terms of their acceptance,” O’Connor said. “I applaud that greatly but we’re not finished by any means. But there’s tangible evidence of progress.”
Connecting across generations
Schlecht said one of the most prevalent issues among older people, whether they’re gay or straight, is social isolation. She said for older adults, social isolation is almost as lethal as a heart attack.
That’s why she and O’Connor work so hard to keep SAOL alive, to ensure folks have a sense of community. Some folks drive dozens of miles to have an hour-long lunch with fellow older LGBTQ+ people.
Schlecht shared the story of one member who suffered from dementia and whose wife was her caregiver. The SAOL gave her wife a reprieve from her duties and also gave the woman a chance to connect with people like her.
She said the woman had begun to forget a lot of aspects of her life, but she remembered she was a lesbian.
Schlecht said some parts of the queer community see them as invisible, too old to keep up. They don’t go out dancing or to clubs anymore, something Schlecht misses from her youth.
Schlecht said she thinks younger queer people believe older folks have given up the fight for rights.
“They think we’re selling out and we got ours, good luck getting yours,” she said.
She tries to share with younger queer people that it’s good to pause to enjoy how far the community has come, not just focus on the struggles. But she recognizes the fight is never over, and there’s an active war on trans youth.
“It’s still a battlefront for parts of our community,” she said. “And that certainly belongs in Pride and it certainly belongs at the center of our attention. But I would like to sit back in the sun and enjoy life, because all these protests, all this work, it’s hard on the joints.”
Schlecht said a lot of older LGBTQ+ folks don’t have children of their own and feel cut off from younger generations. That’s why she finds Pride to be so important, because it’s a chance for inter-generational connection.
Advice for queer youth
Schlecht said queer youth need to find their friends and allies. She said she thinks sometimes there’s a tendency to fixate on a small group of people that 100% agree with you, but she said to think of it like family.
“Don’t give up on us older farts, even if we forget pronouns,” she said. “Help us remember, help us understand.”
She said it’s always the way of the world that younger people take us further as a civilization, and in doing that, sometimes step away from older generations. But the generations can learn from each other, she said, and should be taking the time to listen more to each other.
O’Connor also spoke about finding community, but also about finding and accepting yourself.
“You were made that way. And don’t let whatever pressures that are surrounding you lead you into a place where you’re denying yourself,” he said. “It’s OK to be queer. It’s you, you’re born that way.”
