The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada is located in downtown Las Vegas near Maryland Parkway and Lewis Avenue.
According to The Center’s website, they are a “community-based organization, [that] supports and promotes activities directed at furthering the well-being, positive image, and human rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community, its allies, and low to moderate income residents in Southern Nevada.”
The Center offers group activities, resources, a cafe, a library and more to the LGBTQ community and its allies.
The youth center currently offers Comprehensive Sex Education classes to Vegas-area teens ages 13 to 18 for no charge over the course of six to eight weeks. Youth Resource Specialist AJ Holly Huth said The Center’s youth will be putting on a production based on the Stonewall Riots, called The Night We Stood Together. The 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, New York, are considered the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement. The riots took place in a time where gay Americans had to face an anti-gay legal system.
The Center held a memorial service after the LGBTQ-targeted shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub, in Orlando. Forty-nine people were killed. “The response from Metro was unbelievable,” Huth said about the service. “It’s nice to see that the police are now our protectors instead of harassers,” she added.
One of The Center’s most well-known attributes is The Bronze Cafe, located in the lobby. It is independently owned and operated by Chef Peter Bastien and serves a variety of food.
The Center also has a lending library with thousands of books and hundreds of DVDs. Materials will be lent to anyone with an ID for up to two weeks for free. Although the majority of the material is LGBTQ in nature, they also offer a variety of mainstream works, both contemporary and classic in nature.
I chose this topic because The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada is an important part of the Las Vegas community and serves many purposes for the LGBTQ members, especially with the recent violence in Orlando. All I had to do to take photos was ask permission, which was happily granted.
To take these photos, I used the latest Apple technology on the iPhone SE 12 megapixel iSight camera. The camera is equip with auto image stabilization, a backside illumination sensor, 2.2 aperture, and autofocus with Focus Pixels.
Check out the rest of the photos from The Center on my Flickr page.
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