Welcome to the beginning of Pride Month. Starting this weekend, various cities around the world will begin to celebrate the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community with marches, parades, workshops, parties and protests. The month will end in Toronto with Canada's largest (and one of the world's top five largest) glbt celebrations. Over one million people will gather for the festivities centred around Church Street in downtown Toronto. However, in all of the mob that is Pride, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on what Pride means for just one individual in the glbt community.

I've been a bit hesitant to be too open about my sexual orientation on my weblog because of its public nature, but I think this month provides a particularly important moment to reflect on why and about what I am proud of.

I am a homosexual male. It's amazing to think that it took 20 years for me to be able to utter those words out loud. For 8 of the years prior to that external declaration, there was an internal civil war beween my head and my heart, between my conscious and my sub-conscious. This battle largely consumed my thoughts and ate away at the person I was trying to be. It is for winning this battle on a daily basis that I am proud.

I was warned in an e-mail editorial this week sent to me by a gay friend that "pride" is one of the original seven deadly sins (in fact it rated at the top of that sin heirarchy) and that perhaps the gay community needs to take a step back to ensure that we're not giving way to a vain, introspective and self-absorbed lifestyle. While I echo those concerns, for me I must still find pride in my own coming out journey. Giving myself the freedom to honestly and critically assess myself and to radically alter my self-perception in the face of discrimination and unlove is something that I think is worth celebrating. And pride seems the most appropriate mechanism for that.

Love of self should be, but often isn't, unconditional. Love of self should stem from a very rooted and intrinsic value in our own humanity. Pride is related more to action. Pride is a reflection of the way in which life has been handled and while I am not overly satisfied with how I have handled much of my life, I am particularly proud of the way in which I allowed myself to validate a more full concept of my own identity (a fullness that I continue to find has limitless possibilities).

Moreover, I have pride in the struggle for equality that has been indicative of the glbt community throughout the last century. Countless sacrifices have been made to ensure that basic human rights (which includes the right to love and the right to dream) should be afforded to all people. While the glbt community is often portrayed as promiscuous, unethical, selfish or scandalous, I feel proud to associate myself with a community that has made enormous personal sacrifice for justice in our society.

Finally, for me pride is also a reflection of the importance of being honest. Over the past year I have spent much time reflecting, reading and talking about sexuality. A wise friend commented that society is so sex-obsessed because it is so very uncomfortable with sexuality itself. Sexuality is about more than what happens when the lights go out. Sexuality is about more than what you do with your genitalia. Sexuality is a function of humanity and must be understood as intertwined with our emotions, our actions and even our spirituality. I take pride in the glbt community for being honest about the "humanness" of sexuality and for allowing a more frank and real dialogue on what it means to be sexual to occur.

Pride is bittersweet. While it is a celebration of my own journey and the journey of those who have come before me and will come after me, it is also a chance to allow free spirits to soar in a world where the heavy burdens of discrimination still root us to the ground. Pride is an ability for us also to realize that men in Egypt are still arrested for their own identity, that children in many parts of North America are denied the rightful connection to their parents because of the love they share with someone of the same sex and that innocent victims are still violently attacked because of their identity.

I am proud, in part, because so many of the people in my life who I love and care about are still not proud of the whole me. I take pride in my journey, in my community's journey, in the honest dialogue about sexuality that this pride creates and to make up for the lack of pride others I love do not have. So, throughout the mobs of people in the parades, the parties and the protests lies hundreds of thousands of reasons to be proud. I wish everyone a happy, safe and fun Pride season!