Will gay retirees want to fill some marketer's niche?

It may be a classic case of Groucho Marx's line about not wanting to belong to a club that would have him as a member. A story in the Globe and Mail today talks about the gay retirees as a market niche, with CARP, the national association for the 45-plus (closely associated with Zoomer magazine) launching a chapter to represent older gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered members.

For a $20 annual membership fee to CARP, the group has set up a virtual community to help LGBT seniors link to resources. Although the project focuses on advocacy and so far lists only a handful of gay-friendly retirement homes and long-term care facilities, CARP will eventually also post advertisers interested in catering to the community.

In a culture where marketers have been surprisingly slow to recognize gay retirees as a lucrative demographic, it's another step forward.

But Brandon Matheson, the publisher and editor in chief of fab Magazine and xtra, is not so sure and isn't convinced gay retirees even want a niche, pointing to several failed gay retirement home concepts in Ottawa and Toronto.

"A lot of the people that have lived openly gay and lesbian lives through the seventies and eighties are growing older. ... Any time you have growing prominence, [someone] will start to attach messages directed to those markets.

"The only thing that's going to change a lot of the approaches and the services is time as our community changes."