Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada Records (MS-00537)

The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada (now known as the Center), a 501(c)3 organization, was founded in the fall of 1992 through efforts inspired by the Friday Night Men’s Rap Group at the Community Counseling Center. Initially, the Center board of directors met in a small room at Community Counseling, but in 1993 the Center obtained its own building at 912 East Sahara Avenue. This small former dental office on a side street became the first safe public space in Las Vegas for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. The Nevada legislature that year repealed the state’s sodomy law and the Las Vegas gay community rallied to celebrate and dedicate its new Center on October 15, 1993.

Within a few months of opening the Center offered the community a host of services and programs. It provided free HIV testing; office space for the Nevada Gay Rodeo Association, the NAMES Project, the Lambda Business Association, PFLAG, the Delta Lambda Phi gay fraternity, SAGE [Senior Action Gay Environment]; and meeting space for groups in support of lesbians, gay youth, gay and lesbian parents, Hispanics, gay seniors, transgender people—even a gay science fiction club. On January 23, 1994 the Center sponsored the first annual Man and Woman of the Year Award, known today as the Honorarium.

By 2001, however, the Center had outgrown its small building and the board searched for larger space. They found a 6,000 square-foot storefront across Sahara Avenue in Commercial Center which once housed the Second Time Around Thrift Shop, a fundraising enterprise for Aid for AIDS of Nevada. The Center moved into this space in February 2002 and held its ribbon-cutting and dedication on October 11, 2002 as part of Las Vegas’s National Coming Out Day celebrations. In 2006 the Center moved a couple of doors down where it expanded to include a computer lab, two large meeting/game rooms, and a comfortable community room/library. It now has a community health center and wellness clinic.