Last week, the Obama administration did a reachout to a not-much-discussed demographic — elderly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people:

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced plans to establish the nation`s first national resource center to assist communities across the country in their efforts to provide services and supports for older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals.

Experts estimate that as many as 1.5 to 4 million LGBT individuals are age 60 and older. Agencies that provide services to older individuals may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the needs of this group of individuals. The new Resource Center for LGBT Elders will provide information, assistance and resources for both LGBT organizations and mainstream aging services providers at the state and community level to assist them in the development and provision of culturally sensitive supports and services. The LGBT Center will also be available to educate the LGBT community about the importance of planning ahead for future long term care needs.

Naturally, the Family Research Council has a problem with this:

Apparently, our nation is never too broke to advance a radical social agenda. The agency released a statement on the Center last week, saying its purpose would be to "help community-based organizations understand the unique needs… of older LGBT individuals and assist them in implementing programs for local service providers…" In the release, HHS regurgitates the Left's propaganda to justify the waste, claiming that "1.5 to 4 million" LGBTs are age 60 and older. In reality, HHS has no idea how many LGBT seniors exist. No one does! The movement is only a few decades old, and people who are 80- or 90-years-old didn't grow up in a culture where it was acceptable to identify with this lifestyle.

[Emphasis mine]

Implicit in the FRC's press release is the thinking that it is the "few-decades-old" homosexual "movement" that makes people be gay.  After all, according to the FRC logic, gay people in their 80's and 90's couldn't possibly exist if they were alive before the gay movement.

Where can one begin to dissect this backward thinking?

First of all, even if we grant every single (absurd) premise of the FRC, it still means that, over the next few decades, there will be an increasing number of LGBT elders.  So this HHS initiative is addressing that issue.

Furthermore, the raw numbers, even if they aren't knowable to a precise degree of accuracy, don't negate the trend:

Over the next 25 years, persons in America who are 65 and older are expected to grow from about 12 to 20 percent of the total population, and various estimates indicate that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals will comprise 7 to 10 percent of that senior population. Meanwhile, like the Baby Boomers of all stripes, aging gays and lesbians are radically redefining what it means to be a senior—and how they fit into the larger community. They're coming out of the closet, vocalizing their experiences and needs, and, most importantly, demanding public recognition. "If you go back 40 years, there were virtually no openly gay seniors," says Gary Gates, a senior research fellow and demographer at the Williams Institute. "But now you have a large enough group that people are paying attention."

More importantly, there is the moral aspect, something which transcends the numbers and trends.  As Pam Spaulding wrote:

It doesn't matter whether or not the specific number of elderly lgbts are known.

The point is finding out who they are and taking care of their needs, i.e. a perfect reason for the creation of this national resource center.

This is especially true since the overwhelming number of LGBT elders, in comparison to their straight counterparts, live alone.

Pam continues on the moral theme:

Expressing a belief that homosexuality is a sin is one thing. Actively trying to throwing a monkey wrench into plans to help senior citizens simply because you do not agree with their sexual orientation is entirely something else.

And part of FRC's reasoning for its opposition actually goes against the nature of Christianity.

In the Bible (Matthew 25:45), Jesus said " . . .whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." 

So now FRC, which claims to espouse the values that Jesus taught, is implying that since the number of lgbt senior citizens are allegedly small, they shouldn't warrant any help from the government.  The organization must be reading that new Conservapedia version of the Bible everyone is talking about.

In its eagerness to espouse its version of "values," FRC seems to have abandoned basic Christian decency, as well as common human decency.

The organization forgets that some of these lgbt seniors could be someone's mother, someone's father, or a veteran.

And  isn't it moral to take care of our elderly citizens, period?

In the real world, the answer to this question would be yes. But in the bizarro world of pseudo Christian values that FRC populates, we know the answer is "only if they are not homosexuals."

Touche.

Further reading here at SAGE. [Pictured below: Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, two women that we know couldn't possibly have been gay due to the fact that they were together long before the homosexual movement]