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Many of Calgary’s LGBT seniors are being forced back into the closet, battling discrimination all over again in the form of nursing home bullies and insensitive healthcare staff.

And now, as more and more members of the LGBT community reach retirement, many are calling for more measures to protect an aging population.

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“There is a gap here,” said the executive director of the Calgary Outlink Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, Kelly Ernst.

“In Calgary, there’s really no seniors’ supports for LGBT people. When they do get to that point, there are just no LGBT seniors homes in Calgary at all.”

Same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada just over a decade ago. That change heralded the beginning of a new era where being part of the LGBT community became increasingly acceptable, said Ernst.

But the LGBT seniors entering nursing homes today lived through a different time — a time when homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder or worse. Isolation and shame haunted the community in the past and many people succumbed to the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the years before medical advances helped save lives.