Letter From The Editor

Letter From The Editor

Love? For February? Groundbreaking.

By Kaylee Duff

Photo by Kimberly Burton.

Yet, here we are. Because if you ask me, queer love is groundbreaking. In a world where we are literally still being demonized and discriminated against for loving (and that discrimination reaches even further when intersected with race, ethnicity, ability, class, etc.), being open and proud of loving someone is an act of revolution. An act of pure bravery.

Representation in the form of a queer love story is not seen very often. I can probably count on one hand the number of big-name Hollywood-blockbuster romantic comedies starring a gay couple. And what says equality more than the ability to both satirize and romanticize the way people in the 21st century court each other? And it’s not just rom-coms. It’s most movies, books, comics, video games, whatever — the fraction of LGBTQ+ characters and stories to straight ones is tiny.

When we chose this theme, we didn’t know how things would turn out. We chose a love-themed issue because of the reasons I outlined above. That was last September, at the beginning of this journey, and we had no clue what the issue would contain. In December, the Columbus community lost a light and an icon in Chris Bradley; the True Team was able to talk to his husband, Jason Bradley-Krauss about what he meant to him and to us.

We got to talk to a local artist about his upcoming show, a local business about how to love your dogs, and the people responsible for making the jails in Franklin County safe for LGBTQ+ residents. These are some of the movers and the shakers in Columbus and Ohio that make this city such an amazing place for the queer community. They make it safe for us to love, for us to be out and proud and all of that.

So in honor of Valentine’s Day and this month full of love, I’d like to take a moment to rewind and thank the person who reminds me why I’m doing all of this: my fiancée. She didn’t hesitate when we moved to Columbus from school. She talked me up when I decided to take the plunge and send an email that led me to True Media. She’s always there when I need to bounce ideas off of her or talk things through. Her love is the reason I come to work every morning, convinced to share the light of the LGBTQ+ community with the world.

Happy Valentine’s Day!