Why do we have to stick our mugs in their faces?

Why, they ask, do we have to caterwaul about our lives? When so many people out there have the same problems?

Dearth in opportunities, lack of understanding, discrimination… these, our friends say, have to do as much with class and religion and physical looks as sexual identity.

They’re right, which is why Indigo and other LGBT organizations stick their necks out from time to time in areas that are not – strictly – in the realm of sexual identity.

We can’t parse life into tidy little tidbits. It’s a great messy glob of interlocking directorates and one hurting part’s scream will ripple through the whole.

But this issue isn’t about activism though Indigo is an activist organization.

This issue isn’t about being seen or heard. It’s just about… being.

Being lesbian. Which means being a woman who loves woman. Which means, other than the fact that we insist on all human rights being ours, too, being a person like any other. With the same jumble of contradictory dreams, fears, and passions.

There is no one single lesbian model. Heaven forbid we lose the diversity and start stereotyping ourselves. Indigo exists partly to provide creative space for lesbians to celebrate their sexuality. Each according to her own light.

In our stories here, we have a very stable young Tibo writing a love letter to her older mate. And we have a bratty femme at once refusing and yearning for stability. We have a coming of age story. We have poems of loss and remembrance. We have pictorial paeans to love. We’ve got a real life narrative of preparations for last year’s Gay Olympics in Australia. (Mea culpa, this is one late issue. We’ll be meeting future deadlines.)

We’re us, we’re here. And we’ll keep the juices flowing.