This morning the news came that Anderson Cooper publicly acknowledged what many of us knew - but he refused to admit – he is gay.

It seems a fitting way to close “Pride Month,” doesn’t it?

The interesting thing about using the word ‘pride’ concerning being gay is that very few of us start there. It may in fact, in West Hollywood, be getting a bit easier to be gay, but I can’t think of anyone gay I’ve ever met that was comfortable with his or her sexuality from the point of discovery.

Anderson Cooper came out today. Photo courtesy CNN.

Few of us had parents familiar enough with the subject to be able to deal with it, and support us. We all have had to work at coming out, some of us very, very hard. Some of us never make it, and some of us die trying.

I’ve been proud of a few things in my life, but being gay was never traditionally one of them. That was something that I couldn’t change, but neither could mainstream society accept; a conundrum that was better left unspoken. At the very least, it was safer to keep quiet.

To be sure, it was difficult to gain a sense of pride when we had no role models who were willing to come out. We weren’t hiding in the closet; we were shoved in there and the door was locked.

Any one of us that tried to peek out had the door kicked back in our face. There are a lot of things I don’t understand, but one of them will always be the fact that homosexuals have been around, living nearby and interacting with society since humans became a species, and here it is 2012 and the world is only beginning to crack the surface of tolerance, much less acceptance.

The good thing is that we’ve got a foothold now and the momentum is building. Couple this with the fact that probably everyone knows one of us or knows of us.

It’s no secret we exist, and we have something to be proud about. People, slowly, seem to have begun to realize that the rights and freedoms we’re demanding aren’t wasted once we get them, one by one.

When allowed, we become active members of neighborhoods and churches. We raise decent kids. We pay our taxes and we volunteer. We no longer have only to rally around ourselves and take care of our own, though we’ve shown what we’re made of.

We took care of one another through the 80’s as we were dying, since it seemed no one else would, and now we’ve been able to be instrumental in bringing more attention to the AIDS crisis still festering in Africa, and the world over.

We’ve been able to stop concentrating so much on simply existing, and we’re contributing vastly more to society in general. That’s all we ever wanted to do. We want to love who we love and live.

The reason for Gay Pride is to give gay people a place to immerse themselves in a culture among their peers that few can find anywhere. Photo by WeHo News.

I could spend a lot of time here speaking to the fact that so many homosexuals that came of age before me took greater chances with their lives than I’ve had to.

To a great extent, we have them to thank for the floodgates of our current freedoms being pushed open.

I do thank them and I do appreciate it, though I’m proud enough of myself now to know that had I been in that little bar called Stonewall, I might very well have been one of those fighting.

Those were important and integral steps that gays as a culture needed to take, but today our job is just as important. We need to continue to be the good neighbors we’ve always been.

We need to celebrate our culture as it is and let it grow and evolve as well. We have to keep fighting injustice, whether it concerns gay rights or not.

We have an obligation, in my estimation, to be role models for those who come after us. If by being out I can be observable to someone struggling with sexuality, I’ll accept the extra heat I get for it. I can take it now.

And so now I’ve begun to be proud. I’m proud that I made it here and am secure enough to be out. I’m proud show those unfamiliar with me that ‘gay’ isn’t the only thing there is to know about me.

Sean Patrick is a writer, musician, and WeHo News’ Sunset Strip Reporter. Catch his latest at www.SeanPatrick.us.

‘Gay’ is also nothing I want or need to hide. No one is allowed to try to change me to suit some other definition of normal.

I’m proud that I’ve been able to show my parents that coming out didn’t mean a lonely existence for me. I’m also very proud of the fact that I know we have a long way to go; that there are still many people literally afraid for their lives and locked in the closet. I know that their fears are not unfounded.

I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been helped along the way enough to be able to stand up and be counted, and proud of the anger I have when I see someone being pushed around or taunted for being gay, or even just different.

I’m proud and secure enough to jump in, but I know now that I can help just by being out; an idea so simple and yet so inconceivably hard for many of us, still, to do.

In the past, the word I used to describe how I got where I am was ‘Lucky’. Luck had a lot to do with things, but pride has carried more weight. Now, in a word, I am Proud.

Click here for an E book published by Wehoan Paul Hamel portraying faces of Pride, Pose with Pride.

Sean Patrick is a writer, musician, and WeHo News’ Sunset Strip Reporter. Catch his latest at www.SeanPatrick.us