John Mather & Ryan Maloney are showing LGBTQ+ seniors the time of their lives

At a recent North Beach LGBTQ+ & Friends event at a Fort Lauderdale wine bar, an 89-year-old man approached John Mather.

“He said, ‘You’ve made my life so difficult!’ I said, ‘What?’” Mather recalls. “And he said, ‘Now I have to choose where I’m gonna go every night of the week, because there’s so much going on!’ Then he said, ‘Seriously, you guys have changed my life.’”

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Mather and husband, Ryan Maloney, never intended to change lives when they started North Beach LGBTQ+ & Friends, a social group hosting events in the North Beach area of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their intent, Mather explains, was simply to give their friends and neighbors in the area, which happens to be home to a sizeable population of older LGBTQ+ folks, something to do.

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But having something to do can make a world of difference in LGBTQ+ seniors’ lives. According to the Movement Advancement Project, SAGE, and Diverse Elders Coalition, older LGBTQ+ adults are less likely to be married or partnered than their straight, cisgender counterparts. They are twice as likely to live alone and are particularly vulnerable to social isolation and loneliness, which can have real and dramatic impacts on both physical health and mental well-being. In 2021, SAGE reported that 59 percent of LGBTQ+ elders reported feeling a lack of companionship, while 53 percent reported feeling isolated.

“We’re almost invisible in the gay community as we age,” Mather says, “and it continues to be that way. So people are reluctant to go out.”

In the year and a half since the group launched, North Beach LGBTQ+ & Friends’ happy hours, brunches, and other events have provided a source of community and activity for the area’s LGBTQ+ seniors. As North Beach LGBTQ+ & Friends volunteer Edward Spauster wrote in his nomination of Mather and Maloney for LGBTQ Nation’s 2023 Hometown Heroes, “Our neighborhood is filled with retired people living alone who are single, divorced, or widowed. Heading out to the bars, where the crowds are young and the music is loud, does not have much appeal to many. The work of John and Ryan has brought out so many folks who otherwise would be home watching television alone.”

Mather, 71, and Maloney, 52, met and married in Phoenix, Arizona, where they both have family. They came to Florida in 2017 hoping to simplify their lives, to spend more time just with each other, and to get away from the desert and be close to the ocean. They initially moved to Wilton Manors, Broward County’s “gayborhood,” but relocated again to North Beach during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

About a year and a half ago, on one of their many long walks in the neighborhood, they popped into a little French wine bar. They enjoyed themselves so much that the next time they visited they asked the proprietors about hosting an LGBTQ+ happy hour. “We’d met a few friends in our building, and we thought they’d enjoy this too,” Maloney recalls.

From there, North Beach LGBTQ+ & Friends was born. The group now boasts an email list of nearly 400 people and a Facebook page with over 200 followers. They host weekly happy hours and brunches three nights a week at local bars and restaurants, as well as other special events like water taxi cruises along the Intercoastal Waterway and an upcoming performance of Love! Valour! Compassion! at a local theater.

All their events are built around making LGBTQ+ seniors feel welcomed and comfortable, which they may not in the gay bars and clubs in Wilton Manors. Holding events locally is key to making them accessible to the community’s LGBTQ+ elders, Mather explains. “The average age of the area here, I would say, is about 70. We would prefer people not to drive, and so to provide opportunities within the neighborhood for people to be able to walk and meet some of their neighbors,” he says. “It’s also intended to help the widowed, the divorced, the single, the lonely—and there are so many of them—as a place to say, ‘Let me walk around the corner and introduce myself.’”

“I think we’ve all had some time in our lives when we felt lonely, or at least know what that feeling is even for a short period of time, and it’s not a good feeling at all,” Maloney says. “So, I do think for the older folks in the gay community, it’s even harder because I think older gay folks, they come from that generation where they kinda feel like they’re not accepted fully. I think nowadays younger gays grow up feeling very empowered. There’s a lot of external reinforcement to be proud of yourself. But the older folks, they didn’t grow up that way. I think they still carry around a little bit of, ‘Oh, I might not fit in, so I’m not gonna go out.’ So, it’s even more difficult.”

While Maloney and Mather don’t attend all events, when they do, they make a point of greeting new attendees and making them feel included. “We immediately go to them and make sure we pull them in, introduce them, make them comfortable, and that starts their whole feeling of safety, fun, and so on,” Mather says.

Equally as important, Mather says, is the group’s commitment to building connections with and supporting local businesses. “We have no gay bars in our neighborhood, so we work with the restaurants, bars, businesses to create a real symbiotic relationship. They want us, we want them,” he explains.

Mather says the group’s events have helped keep local businesses afloat during the slower summer months and on off-nights. “They may not have been anti­-LGBT, but they also didn’t understand the impact of the community—the dollars of the LGBT community and how it can sustain their business during the off times,” he says of the non-LGBTQ+ owned establishments the group has partnered with.

And while Mather and Maloney stress that North Beach LGBTQ+ & Friends is not an activist organization, they’re certainly aware of the impact being visible in the community can have, even in the blue bubble of Broward County. “I think, if nothing else, we have introduced ourselves to the community,” Mather says. “We were hidden. We were invisible. We were just part of the flow. But now we’re 400-strong in the community, voicing our opinions. So, everywhere that we go, we begin to make a mark. And the impression is all good. We’re a mature group of people, so we’re very respectful of the businesses and they’re very respectful to us. So, yes, it really begins to change mindsets across the board.”