Who We Love Shapes How We See Ourselves: Community and Internalized Homophobia in Older 2SLGBTQ+ Adults
Shame is not a small thing. For many 2SLGBTQ+ adults, internalized homophobia — absorbing society's negative attitudes about sexual minorities and turning them inward — quietly shapes whether they feel worthy of love, whether they allow themselves to be fully known, and whether they believe their lives have value. It shows up in therapy as self-sabotage, chronic anxiety, and difficulty sustaining relationships.
And it doesn't diminish with age. For many gay and lesbian adults in midlife and beyond, it compounds.
Why Older Adults Carry a Distinct Burden
A new study in The Journals of Gerontology (Cohn-Schwartz et al., 2025) confirms that internalized homophobia may be more strongly linked to mental health problems in older adults than younger ones. Adults now in their 50s through 80s came of age when homosexuality was classified as a mental illness and concealment was a survival strategy. Discrimination accumulated over decades — a cohort effect that younger 2SLGBTQ+ people, while not without struggles, may not carry in the same way.
The study found gay men reported higher internalized homophobia than lesbian women, reflecting both greater historical victimization and significant differences in their social lives as they age.
What the Research Found
Researchers surveyed 409 gay men and lesbian women aged 50–85, examining how social relationships related to internalized homophobia. Gay men were far less likely to have a close partner or children — partly reflecting historical barriers to gay fatherhood. Lesbian women, nearly twice as likely to have children and more likely to have a partner, showed meaningfully lower internalized shame, and those close, enduring bonds partially explained the gender gap.
Unexpectedly, friendships were not associated with lower internalized homophobia — even within the 2SLGBTQ+ community. This finding requires nuance. The study measured only whether someone was cited as a close friend, not the quality, depth, or affirming nature of those friendships, and it didn't examine the impact of chosen family. What the researchers found did matter were relationships tied to enduring structures of love: a partner who chose you, children who know you fully, a sibling who stayed close — bonds whose acceptance carries particular weight because they represent recognition from the people most central to one's life. Friends who become family may well have a similar effect. It's possible that truly intimate, identity-affirming friendships reduce internalized shame in ways this research simply wasn't designed to capture.
What This Means for Community
This is not an argument against 2SLGBTQ+ community spaces — those spaces are lifelines, especially for people estranged from families of origin. But this research invites us to think carefully about what kind of belonging actually heals internalized shame.
For older gay men especially — many of whom lost partners and friends to the AIDS crisis, faced barriers to becoming parents, and carry decades of accumulated stigma — social isolation is not just loneliness. It is internalized shame with nowhere to be contradicted.
Clinically, this points toward attachment and enduring relational belonging as direct targets of therapeutic work with older 2SLGBTQ+ clients. On a community level, it calls for intentional outreach to aging gay men who are unpartnered or without close family — not just programming, but genuine relational integration.
Community matters. But the research suggests the deepest antidote to internalized shame may be the experience of being truly, lastingly known — and chosen anyway.
References
Cohn-Schwartz, E., Gooldin, S., Meiry, L., & Bachner, Y. G. (2025). Sexual orientation and internalized homophobia of middle aged and older gay and lesbian adults: The role of social relationships. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 80(6), gbaf048.
Kelsey Cox
Registered Provisional Psychologist
