Blair Wilson, a 21-year-old Scotsman, recently went viral for posting a smiling selfie he took shortly after a homophobic attack left his face covered in blood.

The Neilston native was visiting his mother for dinner and walking down a main street when he says he heard a group of guys at a bus stop call him a "poof" and a "faggot."

"I was gonna walk away but I had a moment where I was like, I shouldn’t be letting this happen in the place where I’ve lived for 21 years of my life," Wilson tells BBC Scotland.

The situation allegedly escalated when Wilson told the girlfriend of one of the men, “You need to watch out for him, hen,” to which he took offense. The man followed behind Wilson when he walked away.

“So I turned around and he kicked me in the chest and then punched me in the nose, and that’s when my nose started bleeding,” Wilson recalls. After someone from a pub across the road broke up the scuffle, he posted the bloody and defiant selfie with a message that his attacker "will get what's coming" to him.

"I was shocked and scared and did not know who to talk to," he explains. "I knew that if I put it on Facebook, it would at least get some shares around Neilston. So I just smiled, took the photo, wrote a kinda bittersweet message and hoped for the best."

When Wilson woke up the next morning, the photo already had 1500 likes and 500 shares. "It was immense," he says. "I had comments from people all over the world saying how much they looked up to me and how needed that story was." Although he felt unsafe and didn’t leave the house for two days, the outpouring of support ultimately made him realize "there’s no reason to be scared."

"I believe he said what he said because he was trying to prove something, if not to himself then to his girlfriend and friends around him," Wilson continues. "I do believe that’s a common thing we see around the country, but I do think that the majority is more accepting and much more loving."

"To the people that use language like this and treat other people like the way I was treated, we’re not going to tolerate it in 2018."

Instead of meeting with Donald Trump, who is visiting Scotland this weekend, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon led Scotland’s largest LGBTQ Pride event today in Glasgow as an honorary grand marshal. Sturgeon is the first serving prime or first minister in the U.K. to lead a Pride event.

Sturgeon surprised Wilson by mentioning his recent attack in her public speech at the march. "Instead of cowering away, he spoke up," she told the crowd. "And let me say this, the principles and values demonstrated by that young man, of dignity, of courage, and of compassion, are the values that should define our country. So Blair, we all stand with you."

"Thank you, Nicola, for sharing this and for being one of the few politicians left not scared to represent the LGBTQ community," Wilson responded on Facebook. "You’re an absolute icon for this."

A Police Scotland spokesperson confirms to local paper Barrhead News that their investigations of the attack are ongoing.