This is the transcript of the conversation with Evelyn BruMar, executive director of the Casa BruMar Foundation:

Linda:
Hello and welcome to episode 32 of The Spectrum. This was recorded on November 20th, 2025. Today we’re sitting down with Evelyn BruMar who’s the Executive Director of the Casa BruMar Foundation. Evelyn, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to meet with us.

Evelyn:
It’s an honor to be able to discuss what we’re going to discuss and be a part of your show.

Linda:
So let’s start with what is the Casa BruMar Foundation?

Evelyn:
So let’s start off with “Casa”. The reason why we named it Casa is because I wanted Virginia to know that this is a Latina-led LGBTQ organization where the home that people are missing can be found through us. And BruMar is a combination of my last name and my wife’s last name. So before marriage equality was legal, we accepted how our friends were identifying us as the BruMars, the BruMars because we’ve been together for so long. So we adopted that name, made it legal, and turned ourselves into a business. And then ultimately made it into a non-profit. So Casa BruMar Foundation.

Linda:
What’s the mission of the foundation?

Evelyn:
When we moved to Virginia, we realized that Virginia didn’t have the protections that many other states did. And being a same-sex couple, we wanted to make sure that our path to retirement and growing our family was going to be protected and also have access to all the resources available. So we offer that through our foundation. If a young person finds themselves dropped out of high school, we end up helping them with a GED, high school diploma, getting some services to people who might be afraid of being discriminated against, and also making sure that our elderly population don’t go into hiding or regress when they have to go to hospice because a lot of times they find themselves being discriminated against because of these facilities being faith-based.

Linda:
How long has the foundation been around?

Evelyn:
Officially, it’s been around since October of 2019. But we’ve been doing the work since we moved to Virginia in 13.

Linda:
So you’ve been doing this for a while now? Yeah, since we moved to Virginia. Yeah.

Linda:
If we have time at the end, I’d like to return to your marriage corporation. But for the moment, your website, you talked about things like connecting people to resources. What does that mean?

Evelyn:
For a lot of us in Virginia, before 2020, it was legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people. And because of that discrimination, many of us did not seek resources when we had every right to. And so what we did was we made sure that we crossed all the T’s, dotted all the I’s, and cut through red tape to make sure those resources were made available, even though they were coming up against barriers of accessing them. We learned the local laws and policies from school board to foster care to county laws and and the human rights. What we do is when somebody contacts us and says, “Okay, we’ve been displaced. There’s no affordable housing here.” Well, in your county, they offer these programs. Let’s help you get those programs, access to those programs. A lot of young people have issues actually talking to people on the phone. So we bridge that gap. Our elders have issues actually filing for those resources online. So we help them with that. So that’s what we do. And we have we know the narrative and the language and who to talk to to make sure those those resources become available quickly.

Linda:
So we’re here in Manassas today, but what geographic footprint do you work in?

Evelyn:
The whole Commonwealth.

Linda:
Oh, okay. So that’s a big area.

Evelyn:
It is.

Linda:
If people are interested in finding you for help. How do they do that?

Linda:
There’s multiple ways. There’s social media. We’re on Insta and Facebook. There’s also online through CasaBrumarFoundation.org. And then there is we are in a lot of community centers. So let’s say the Shenandoah, Charlottesville. Any community center, LGBTQ community center, we have been trying to make sure that we are connected to and our resources are available to them to share. We work with multiple pride groups. And so that way they have our resources as well. We want to be the first point of contact for those who are struggling with resources. That way we can help them navigate that system. We’re also in Prince William County, Manassas, Fairfax, Loudon in their local government resources like Continuum of Care. So that way when somebody is struggling, they can contact us through the local government.

Linda:
And about how many people a year do you work with?

Evelyn:
A lot because we –

Linda:
You’re covering the whole Commonwealth of Virginia.

Evelyn:
Yes. And then we don’t discriminate either. So people come across our resources and they just had bad luck going through the system that they contact us and we help them navigate the system. So we’ve had people who don’t identify as LGBTQIA, who also we had people from other states. We’ve had people from other countries contact us and we help them navigate their systems. So I would say people who identify as LGBTQ, we get a contact rate about three to five a month, but we get parents who are not who are asking for help for the children. We get teachers who are not who are asking for resources for their kids. And then we get government agencies contact us because they’re coming across a client that needs more resources. I get contacted, the website gets contacted, social media gets contacted. I would say about an average of anywhere from eight to 10 people a month. And we work with them.

Linda:
You said you’ve been the foundation has been an official entity since 2019. And you’ve been doing the work since 2013.

Evelyn:
Yes.

Linda:
What motivated you to do this? I mean, that’s that’s a big commitment that you’ve made.

Evelyn:
Twofold. First, when I first came out to my family, my family disowned me and I lived on the streets practicing survival behavior. And at that time, it was illegal to be gay and I needed these resources. And if it wasn’t for the kindness of strangers, I would not have gotten off the streets. This is a way to honor and respect the path and the trials and tribulations of Evelyn BruMar as a young person as as a minor. The second fold is when we moved to Virginia, I knew I wanted to do this kind of work, but I didn’t know if I was going to be opening up a nonprofit. We had a foster child we wanted to adopt and the state of Virginia would not allow us to adopt this child. And I thought that was ridiculous because this child was in the foster care system and suffered tremendous traumas. And we were the only people who can offer this child a good life and an opportunity to be successful as a young adult. And Virginia was not going to allow us to be their advocates, be their parents. And so we got more aggressive with our outreach and ultimately it turned into this organization.

Linda:
That’s a pretty powerful story. When you came out, this was, did you say you were from Mexico when we were talking earlier?

Evelyn:
I’m first generation American. My mom is from Mexico. But so I’m Mexican and I’m also indigenous. I’m Chumash tribe from my father’s side. But this was in the early 90s that I came out in San Diego.

Linda:
What brought you to Virginia?

Evelyn:
My wife. San Diego is a big military town. After getting my feet on solid ground and being able to support myself, I had a career. I had a community. My family was coming around to accepting that they can’t change me. And I met my wife at that time. I didn’t know she was Navy. This is right after 9-11 and she just got deployed to Iraq. And then she came back. And when she came back, her girlfriend stood her up. And I was teaching country line dancing at a country bar, at a gay bar in Hillcrest in San Diego. Dance, y’all dance, can get you more access to more people than just a smile. So if you learn to dance, y’all. But that we connected there. We bought a house and she got orders to go to Washington state. And I had to make a decision. Do I leave the community that I built up for myself, the chosen family that I’ve built for a chance at Love, which I’ve never had? Or do I stay behind and work on my career and keep continue to build my community in San Diego? And ultimately, I chose love. It was during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. So I went back into the closet. I was a military spouse without the benefits and without the access of resources. So, went to Washington state. We spent a few – seven years in Washington state before she retired. And then a couple years after that, after she retired, a job opportunity left her and we needed to make a decision. Where do we go? So we moved to New Jersey where she had her last remaining grandfather. Hurricane Sandy moved us to Pennsylvania and a job opportunity. Moved us to Virginia. So ultimately falling in love, military, hurricane, and a job opportunity is what got me to Virginia.

Linda:
Okay. And then coming here, you saw the political situation and decided that this was what your calling was.

Evelyn:
I came to Virginia and I wanted to be a homeowner and I bought an affordable house in a county, in a district that was completely homophobic. And yes, I needed to change that. Needed to change that.

Linda:
For those that aren’t familiar with the Virginia, this particular area where we are right now had one of the most homophobic state representatives in the House of Delegates who got replaced by a trans woman.

Evelyn:
He was my delegate. We lovingly call him Bathroom Bob. Because that was his whole issue. And meeting Danica before she decided to run was one of those pivotal moments that got me involved behind the scenes in politics. I knew that I wanted to make positive change. I didn’t know which way it was going to go. If it was going to be in politics, it was going to be a nonprofit, if it’s going to be in business, but I knew it needed to happen. And today it’s in all three of those ways. I have a nonprofit. I do nonprofit work and outreach and advocacy work. I sit on multiple boards of nonprofits. I’m a vice chair for the human rights commission for Prince William County. And I work with people’s campaigns on educating them on what the issues are for the LGBTQ community in Virginia, because I am basically boots on the ground. I work with the people who need these resources so I can let them know what they need to change.

Linda:
Let’s fast forward to 2025. The political environment has been pretty rotten for LGBTQ+ people. Have you seen an uptick in people reaching out to the foundation?

Evelyn:
Absolutely. And it’s not just LGBTQIA+ people. It’s also heterosexual people who find themselves being labeled that way because of the way they identify and express. So they’re finding themselves being targets of hate because of their child or because of their parent or because they want to self express a little bit different than what is heteronormative. And so they’re facing those issues too and those fears. And so we’re we’re coming across all kinds of people. And because the nonprofit is called Casa BruMar, we have in the Manassas area in this area of Prince William County, a large Latino population. And so we get asylum seekers, we get first generation Americans, we get a lot of Latinos who don’t know how to navigate the system. They just want somebody who has the experience navigating the system, who is a human rights commissioner, who has connections through elected officials and through county government to help them access the resources and benefits they should have. So I end up getting contacted by them and I serve them too because there’s no discrimination. When you uplift the least among us, you end up uplifting all of us. And I know that it’s the LGBTQ+ community is a favorite target, but so is the Latino community right now.

Linda:
Yeah, that’s for sure. I noticed on your website, you have a scholarship committee. How does that work?

Evelyn:
Every year in January, we open it up to young people 18 to 25 or 20. Actually, I will say this, we’ve had a couple younger people than 18, but up to 25 who are going to go to college and they’re looking for supplemental income or money to help them go to college. So they would fill out through the online portal, the application, and then they would submit documentation to support that they’re going to college. It’s open every year. The reason why we started that was I had a friend approach and ask about how can we amplify the education program that we’re already offering through Casa BruMar. We were doing a GED in high school, but we didn’t have a scholarship for college yet. They had a friend that passed away, Marja, and they wanted to name that scholarship fund after her. And so it’s named after Marja and it’s called the Rise Up Scholarship. We fundraise every year for that. And then we pick a few young LGBTQ people or people that might be a heterosexual here and there who has done the advocacy work and the footwork to change the landscape of inclusivity to make sure the LGBTQ people are included. That’s one of the points we look at. What have you been doing to amplify the cause for the LGBTQ people and what have you been doing to build community for the LGBTQ people besides being LGBTQ? And so the scholarship committee picks the young people and they bring it to the board and the board whittles it down to a couple of people and we approve it.

Linda:
In terms of the 2025 situation and the attacks on particularly in the transgender community, you said that you’ve seen an uptick in terms of people coming for help. Has 2025 changed the nature of the kind of help they’re looking for or is it just a larger volume of the same thing?

Evelyn:
It’s a larger volume of the same thing. The trans community has always been the target and we have non-binary, gender fluid young people who are struggling to stay in school and we have people who don’t want to transition but don’t identify as the gender marker that they were assigned at birth that are struggling as well, not just with going to school or getting a job but also making sure they have resources to be able to have a conversation with their family and get their family to understand what they’re going through. That is still the same. The uptick that we’re finding right now is in housing. There’s not enough affordable housing and shelters and DV shelters, domestic violence shelters, do not accommodate appropriately to the trans community and LGBTQ people. When you have a housing crisis and you have people from the LGBTQ+ community, especially our trans siblings, not being able to find shelter because there’s no room for them, because they haven’t made accommodations for them, that’s the real problem right there. Because if we can’t find a place for stability, a home, a shelter, how are they ever going to be able to come back from that? Living on the streets is hard. Personal experience is very, very hard and it can cause so much more undue trauma that is even harder to come back from. What we’re also saying is that substance abuse becomes part of it because we’re trying to cope with that trauma. Yes, we’re getting more non-gender conforming people contacting us, but it’s not the discrimination, it’s the housing that’s the problem.

Linda:
Let’s back up. When we talked on the phone and you told me a little bit about your life, I was intrigued by how you worked around the lack of marriage equality at the time. Lauri and I married in 2015, so we just passed 10 years, but we had long discussions about how would we do this if there wasn’t marriage equality and we decided that it seemed so likely to be imminent that we just waited for it. But obviously you didn’t do that, you got started before we did. So what drove you to the path of forming a corporation to deal with the lack of marriage equality?

Evelyn:
I couldn’t marry my wife at that time or have a civil union because she was active duty military and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a policy and it was – marriage equality didn’t exist. So how do we protect each other? Besides making sure that we were on each other’s bank accounts, that we had a life insurance policy that benefited the other person and that the house was bought in both of our names, we had to figure out how do we do it. Washington state at that time was offering a solution of a civil union, but you weren’t registered to the county as a marriage, you would register through the state to actually as an LLC. That was so smart. Heidi and I, Heidi’s my wife, went down and we registered ourselves as a business because it seems nowadays businesses have more rights than marriage, right married couples. And then what we did too is that’s when we changed our name. My last name we used to be Martinez, hers was Brubaker. And so we officially became the BruMars, which our friends were lovingly calling us that already. And we registered as a business. And so that is how we protected ourselves when we lived in Washington. During that time, one state might recognize somebody’s marriage and another wouldn’t. But every state recognized a business. So turn yourself to a corporation, put all your assets into the corporation bank account. So and not in your personal, make sure that everything you open up together is in your business name. That also gives you protection from if somebody wants to sue you personally, they can’t sue the business. So you’re protected that way too. It’s just all these things that I learned from being a business instead of a marriage that actually protected us a lot better than then marriage did at that time. Now that we found out that they’re not the Supreme Court is not going to listen to bring up that marriage equality issue, they’re not going to listen to it. I still suggest that you turn your family if you if you’re a same sex couple, if you’re a couple who maybe doesn’t want to get married, but you want to protect your partner for whatever reasons have a business together, or an LLC and put your big assets in there so that it’s protected from outside groups. And also that way, the distribution of those assets become a lot more fairer than whatever state you’re at. And the state says, well, you know what, we don’t want to recognize your your marriage. Or if the state says something like you’re at fault, because you’re in a state that’s finds fault, and not every state is no fault. But a business has to divide all their assets equally amongst all the partners. And if there’s two partners, then you’re going to get half of what you built.

Linda:
That’s some really interesting solutions to a problem. And yeah, we dodged one bullet with marriage equality. But Clarence Thomas has been inviting cases. So the odds are pretty good that there will be another one. So this is still good advice for people to protect themselves, something that I never even thought about and now need to go learn more about.

Evelyn:
Yeah, yeah, it’s doesn’t in Virginia doesn’t cost much. I don’t think it costs anything to register as a business. Just need a tax ID. It’s no different than a social security number.

Linda:
At this point, what question have I not asked you that you think is important to talk about?

Evelyn:
I would like to talk about the training that Casa BruMar Foundation does with first responders and law enforcement. So we have a situation with ICE, where this federal agency is allowed to come into any area and run over the police, the police department might be inclusive, the police department might be protecting the minority community. But when ICE comes in, they don’t care if you have papers or not, they don’t care if you’re LGBTQ or heterosexual, they’re focused on one thing. And that is rounding up and collecting brown people. And if you’re seeking asylum, it doesn’t matter. That, in turn, makes me a little more adamant about training law enforcement, first responders and our federal agents. Before Trump, I had the ability to train federal agencies. After Trump, I am not allowed to unless a county area is opening it up to federal agencies, and they want to take the training that I’m offering in that region. So crisis intervention training, when an officer is engaging somebody that is in a traumatic situation, that is experiencing trauma, that their adrenaline is spiraling, they might not be able to engage appropriately with law enforcement. And if law enforcement cannot use appropriate language to get them to connect, then those services that they’re supposed to offer will not be able to be adequate enough to protect the person and protect the officer. And it can downroll spiral the situation when it doesn’t have to. We’re finding a lot of our young people that are non binary, trans or gender nonconforming, constantly being dead named, constantly being misgendered, and officers are not picking up on that. Or they don’t have the language to address it. I will have to say in the Manassas and Prince William County location, Casa BruMar Foundation has been doing crisis intervention training with them now going on four years, we’re seeing empathy being put in place, we are seeing language being changed a little bit to be able to assist and connect with the people they are running into. And we’re also seeing that they are using us as a resource to help people that they’re engaging in stressful times to get connected to other resources or to funding that they might be limited to. The building I’m at, some of the offices are mental health providers, so access to therapists and social workers and psychologists.

Linda:
That’s some much needed good news.

Evelyn:
Yes, yes, it is. Yeah, Lauri, you have a question.

Lauri:
How involved are you with the school systems as well?

Evelyn:
Yes. So Casa BruMar Foundation, our Rise Up scholarship is – the people who are on that committee are teachers, they’re teachers from Fairfax, Prince William County, they’re Stafford. And so we are very engaged in that way, what they’re learning on the ground, we are hearing besides working with the school board here in Prince William County, also being connected to our representatives in Manassas, and having representatives that we are in contact with, because we get cases that we have to contact their representatives in Loudoun, Fairfax, Stafford, Orange County, Charlottesville, Shenandoah, all over the Commonwealth, we find somebody who has inclusive record, and that’s who we engage first, if the area is very non inclusive, we look for somebody at an upper level, which could be a delegate or a state senator, or even a congressional person who is inclusive so that we can figure it out. Casa BruMar Foundation has made friends with people through the whole state. I used to serve on the inaugural board LGBTQ+ inaugural board to the governor, I served Northam, and I served Youngkin. Yes. We have connections throughout the whole Commonwealth, the former education, the Secretary of Education for Virginia, Atif Qarni, is a friend of mine. And so we’ve had to tap into him a couple times to get resources to people and rural areas that weren’t getting their resources to get their education. So it’s all about community building. It’s about outreach. It’s about working with those you don’t think you have access to. So I have friends who are elected persons in the Republican Party. I have some who are libertarian, who run organizations. And so we find common ground. And that’s where we build off of.

Lauri:
Do you have any connections with Abigail?

Evelyn:
Yes, she’s my Emerge sister.

Linda:
Going into 2026, what do you see as the biggest challenge for the foundation?

Evelyn:
I think we’re going to have to run a marathon to make up for the big gap in housing. And once we can get HUD on board or figure out a solution here in Virginia, we can actually be able to do foster care housing for our older kids who are about to age out in a communal apartment where everybody’s LGBTQ. We can do a domestic violence shelter that is LGBTQ based same sex couple abuse is a little bit different than heteronormative one because the roles are very defined and heteronormative one and same sex, it’s wherever needs to be met. And so you can’t go off of the same stereotypes. You can’t go off of the same training about how to heal somebody or help somebody get through trauma or abuse when it’s the same sex partner, but you have to know the dynamics of that. So we have to have inclusive training for that as well as our shelters. Our shelters should be updated, the bathroom should be single stall because who I myself, I present femme and I do that on purpose because it’s easier to navigate a heteronormative world presenting femme. I can get through more doors than if I presented the way I really wanted to. It’s a sacrifice I make and I’m okay with but single stall bathrooms. I don’t want to go to a game. Let’s say let’s go to a football game and I have, you know, the lines are long and then you have little kids looking underneath the stalls to see if there’s somebody in there. I was like, who are you? Why are you looking where your head down here? I just, if it’s a whole single stall, I feel comfortable to do whatever, you know, to sit comfortably and do my business. As you go to a concert, I’ve just happened to me too. I’ve gone to a concert and because the stalls are not single stalls, people walk by and peer through the gaps. Why are you looking at me using the bathroom? That’s so invasive. If it was a single stall that shut completely, I’d feel safe. Right. So make all public restrooms a single stall and the hand washing station unisex. That way, whoever’s walking in there, everybody can see. But whoever’s in that bathroom has the privacy and the dignity that we all deserve.

Linda:
It’s amazing how simple solutions just keep getting ignored.

Evelyn:
Exactly. Exactly. So that’s going to be a big hall to update all our public facilities that way to see if better business bureau here in Virginia and in the areas and the business chambers help support single stall bathrooms in our restaurants and our businesses and also to get our schools on board too. Kids are just trying to figure themselves out. They’re trying to figure out their identity. They’re trying to figure out how to express themselves. Their bodies are not developing at the same rate. They want privacy too. We as adults, we feel uncomfortable being seen nude, not intentionally when you’re somebody walking by and they can look in the crack of a bathroom stall. But kids are even more so. We want to help them develop healthily. See, this is the accent because I’m first generation American. I was like Spanish was spoken in the home. I have a hard time saying the T’s and the H. So we can protect all our young people with a focus on the least among us, which is our trans, non-binary, gender fluid, gender nonconforming LGBTQ+ community. We end up protecting all of us and all the kids are going through the same developmental issues. So if we protect, if we look out for the least among us, we end up protecting all of us. So the kids, instead of not changing the bathrooms to protect the kids that are suffering the most, if you change the bathrooms to protect them, then you end up protecting all of them and that should not be an issue. So it’s going to cost money for our school districts to get that funding to change the bathrooms to single stall PE in high school. There should be other ways of doing that. You don’t have to all run track or have to all go do this and then have to all go in the showers at the same time and make it an elective. It doesn’t have to be there. And if somebody wants to do something else and something that’s not just so sweaty, but it’s still a way of getting out there, walking laps around, you still getting them out and they’re still exercising. We know that walking helps everybody. What’s that 10,000 step rule? Kids can do that too. They don’t have to go do running laps and then shower with a bunch of other people of the same gender. They feel uncomfortable because they’re not developing in the same rate as they are. We’re causing a lot of trauma to our kids because we’re not thinking of those who are suffering. If we think about the ones who are suffering, because they’re voicing it, we will end up protecting the ones who are not voicing it, who are suffering just as much.

Linda:
Yeah. For every one child that’s telling you, there’s probably 10 that aren’t.

Evelyn:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Linda:
Let me give you a chance for a last word, anything you want to close with?

Evelyn:
I do want to close with something. And I want to close with, even if the relationship that you are in is heterosexual normative, it doesn’t mean it’s the exact same relationship that the next heterosexual normative person is having. There is fluidity with expression. There is fluidity with love. There is fluidity with how we express that love. Everything is fluid. The seasons are fluid. The way we age is fluid. Our sense of being is fluid. The way we express ourselves, our fashion is fluid. Everything is fluid. So you have to understand that somebody being different than you is okay, is just part of their journey. And not being like you isn’t dangerous. Different isn’t dangerous. It’s actually an advantage.

Linda:
Yeah. Diversity is not a dirty word.

Evelyn:
Absolutely.

Linda:
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us. This was a great conversation. And hopefully we can make the foundation a little more visible out in the world.

Evelyn:
I would love that. And if there’s anybody under 25 wanting to go to college, please contact CasaBruMarFoundation.org. If anybody is looking to educate themselves or their community about what their human rights are, contact us. I will go where I need to go and do classes about know your rights, especially to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Linda:
If somebody wants to support the foundation’s work, how do they do that?

Evelyn:
Absolutely. Please. Yes. You can go onto our website and make a donation. We have two ways. We have the general fund, which supports the community center we should be opening next year. We’re getting the keys in a few weeks. We’ll be the first community center that has a pride clinic attached to it, I believe in all of Virginia. Most of the healthcare is through contracts or a mobile unit. We’ll have one actually at the center. One will have that healthcare going on, the pride clinic going on and a pharmacy. And the other half will be social services, food pantry, clothing closet and community events. And it’s going to be in the Woodbridge location in Prince William County. If you donate to the general fund, that’s what you’re going to be supporting the community center and the work that I do in education. Or you can support specifically the scholarship fund and help our kids go to college because if they can get into position of leadership or in medical or in law enforcement or as a lawyer, we have representation. And if we have representation in diverse areas, then we wouldn’t be seen as different or as dangerous.

Linda:
All right. Thank you so much. And thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Evelyn:
Well, thank you for having me.