My response to a friend who asked me to post a Straight Pride picture.

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Pride is an inside job. Healthy people, all people need it. Being OK with yourself. Being a human being is amazing. Some of us, because of sexual identity, race, social status ... or whatever, get the message: you are not wanted here. I had to hide my identity as a gay human for years in order keep being employed. That stress took a toll. My church went to my district and outed me. It took years to be OK inside ... to be proud of whom I was. My Mom never accepted me or my partner. Her last words to me as she was passing at age 88: "Dirty, dirty." My brother told me he was ashamed to have a gay brother. And when John and I planned to get married here in CA back in 2008, 70% of the voters here in Siskiyou County helped pass Prop. 8 and took that right to marry away from us. By then we had pride enough, inside OK-ness, to go to Canada, a marriage equality nation, to be married. Pride cannot come from the outside: it is an inside job. Gay Pride ... Straight Pride ... Black Pride ... Human Pride. The ability to look into the mirror and say to yourself, "I am enough. I have something to give."