Community leaders gathered in downtown San Rafael recently to celebrate that Marin County again has an LGBTQ center. The new facility, which is currently being run entirely by volunteers, comes following last year’s closure of the Spahr Center after it ran out of money.
There is no executive director, and “we have a lot more work before that can happen,” Bill Otton, a gay man who is president of the new center’s board, told the Bay Area Reporter, adding, “at the moment I don’t think anyone has identified a potential leader, but we will keep our eyes open to cultivating a person as we begin to grow.”
Otton added, “Fortunately, we have an incredible team of volunteers helping in the meantime.”
For now, the Marin LGBTQ+ Center is focusing on a program for transgender youth and their families. Other programs are expected to follow, officials said.
“We’re not here to duplicate,” the Reverend Jane Adams Spahr, a lesbian and retired Presbyterian minister, said at the May 16 kick-off event at its new offices at the Marin Multi-Cultural Center. “We’re here to empower our community. If you are doing something better than we are, we say, bless your heart. … We say we’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going away.”
The Marin LGBTQ+ Center is leasing space from the Marin Multi-Cultural Center, located at 709 Fifth Avenue. Spahr had been the namesake of the Spahr Center, which functioned as the North Bay County’s LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS center until its closure in February 2024.
The Spahr Center itself was created in 2015 from the merger of the Spectrum LGBT Center and the Marin AIDS Project. Spahr had started those organizations in the 1980s, an article in the Pacific Sun noted last year. https://pacificsun.com/marin-nonprofit-serving-lgbtq-and-hiv-communities-suspends-all-programs/
Bobby Moske, a gay man who had been on the Spahr Center’s board of directors in the past, said that after the center’s closure, “I called Jane Spahr and I said ‘Jane, what are we going to do?’”
“This woman is 82 years old,” he said of Spahr. “She didn’t miss a beat. She just looked at me and said, ‘We’re going to do it all over again.’ Within eight months, they had a 501(c)3 [nonprofit status], they had a website, they had a mailing address, they had a board of directors, they had a location, and they really, really worked hard to get the word out.
“They weren’t privy to any of the email lists or anything else the old Spahr Center had,” Moske said. “This had to be grassroots, and had to be bottom up, and all the people involved in the original Spahr Center came back to put it together again.”
“We too have basic operational expenses and will use some for community building events,” Spahr stated. “As you know, we are all volunteers and we hope to raise enough money to be able to employ staff one day. It is a community effort.”
The new center’s board is asking other community members to also step up and assist in ensuring it is a viable endeavor.
“We’re inviting people to come and give their gifts,” Spahr said. “We invite people to come with us to build the organization, and we want to build it from a place of love and justice and inclusiveness across the board.”
“In spring, we had meetings with stakeholders to talk about what [the] Spahr [Center] was and what do we want the new center to be,” he said.
These discussions, which included 37 people, led to 95 suggestions, Otton said.
People who are interested in becoming more involved can find the center participating in the Fairfax festival Saturday, June 7, at 9:15 a.m., Mill Valley Pride June 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the Pride celebration at the Marin Multicultural Center Sunday, June 8, from 1 to 4 p.m.