Loney's relatives did not reveal that he was gay because they felt that his sexuality would affect his chances of survival, Doug Pritchard, co-director of the Christian Peacemakers Teams, told The Canadian Press.

\"It's a sad fact that around the world gays and lesbians are more vulnerable to attack than straights,\" Pritchard said.

Pritchard said the family feared Loney would come to harm at the hands of his Iraqi abductors if they had known his sexual orientation.

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Dan Hunt, Loney's partner, shunned the media spotlight during the ordeal, emerging only to greet his partner when he returned to Toronto on Sunday.

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The 41-year-old Loney was rescued last Thursday by coalition forces in Iraq along with fellow Canadian Harmeet Sooden and Briton Norm Kember. American Tom Fox, who had also been kidnapped, was found on a Baghdad street March 10. He had been shot to death.

I am learning many things from my captivity, and have a universe of things to be grateful for. Among them is a new and deep appreciation for the women and men who wear the uniform of military service. I likely would not be writing this today if it were not for them. Thus, I am confronted with a great paradox. I, the Christian pacifist peacemaker, am alive, am free because of the very institutions I believe are contrary to Christian teaching.

Christ teaches us to love our enemies, do good to those who harm us, pray for those who persecute us. He calls us to accept suffering before we inflict injury. He calls us to pick up the cross and to lay down the sword.

We will most certainly fail in this call. I did. And I'll fail again. This does not change Christ's teaching that violence itself is the tomb, violence is the dead-end. Peace won through the barrel of a gun might be a victory but it is not peace. Our captors had guns and they ruled over us. Our rescuers had bigger guns and ruled over the captors. We were freed, but the rule of the gun stayed. The stone across the tomb of violence has not been rolled away.

I'm learning that there are many kinds of prisons and many kinds of tombs. Prisons of the mind, the heart, the body. Tombs of despair, fear, confusion. Tombs within tombs and prisons within prisons.

There are no easy answers. We must all find our way through a broken world, struggling with the paradox of call and failure. My captivity and rescue have helped me to catch a glimpse of how powerful the force of resurrection is. Christ, that tomb-busting suffering servant Son of God, seeks us wherever we are, reaches for us in whatever darkness we inhabit.

May we reach for each other with that same persistence. The tomb is not the final word.

The organization (Christian Peacemakers) is sponsored by the Mennonite Churches of the USA and Canada, Church of the Brethren, the Quakers, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, the Basilians, and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. All in all, a fairly conservative crowd. Loney's own religious background is rooted in Roman Catholicism. How did a nice activist-minded gay boy get himself involved with this bunch?

A Canadian activist and Toronto resident, Loney travelled to Iraq in November 2005 on his third delegation to that country with the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT). Four days into his trip, on Nov 26, he and CPT members -- American Tom Fox, Brit Norman Kember and fellow Canadian Harmeet Singh Sooden -- were kidnapped and held hostage by a group of Iraqis who called themselves the Swords Of Righteousness Brigade.

After four long months, and the murder of Fox, Loney, 41, and his two remaining team members were rescued by a multinational troop led by the British forces on Mar 23 of this year. He returned to Canada where he quickly became a media darling.

Yet there is a hidden piece to this saga. It's a love story really. It's a tale of two men, friends since the late 1970s and lovers for years, who were forced to hide their relationship in the face of intense media scrutiny for fear that the wrong word or a misplaced gesture would cause the kidnappers to kill Loney for being queer.

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In recognition of Pride Toronto's theme of Fearless, Loney and Hunt are being honoured as recipients of the Fearless award at its second annual gala on Tue, Jun 12.

\"Fear is something that every gay person struggles with or has struggled with, the fear of being who I am and what the cost of being who I am is. There is a dimension of fear that only queer people can experience.