No More Special Rights for Heterosexuals

Sometimes even the strongest supporters of equal rights for minority groups still tend to see the majority's status as "normal" and everyone else's as being the exception. The fact that even most queer activists seldom refer to the problem of special rights for straights, suggests that it may be hard for some of them to see the problem in that light; if straights have a right, it must be a basic human right, not a special one granted to them as a class. To fight that misperception, I have decided to devote this column to a list of some of the most heinous examples of legal privledges that straights have seized for themselves:

Civil marriage

Straight special interest groups and legislators have taken this religious institution out of the churches where it belongs and into city hall, and heaped "wedding gifts" such as tax breaks and special legal and contractual status onto the heads of the blushing celebrants. Of course, only straights need apply.

Spousal benefits

The sexual elite plunder the public tax coffers to provide free insurance and other gifts to their sexual partners. They even force private employers to provide these benefits for the straight lovers of all employees.

Elite military corps

Straights have created an exclusive military corps, which only straights are allowed to join. However, they have been known to open up admission to the general public when they are involved in a war and there is a chance that lives may be lost.

Elite youth corps

Special status in the form of a congressional charter and special access to public buildings, has been given to the Boy Scouts of America, whose leaders are carefully screened to be sure they are straight. Although they claim to allow boys from outside the straight community to join, the boys must swear to the same oath that is used to justify the screening of adult leaders, containing the promise to be "morally straight". The Boy Scouts even exclude atheist straights and female straights from their ranks.

Hunting privledges

Although it is technically illegal, in practice the courts are sometimes lenient towards straights who hunt and kill or maim people outside their sexual group for sport.

Educational monopoly

Every child is required to attend schools taught exclusively by straights. Straights claim to be the only people in society strong enough to resist the temptation to have sex with children. Their claim that sex with children is such a strong temptation should have made the rest of us suspicious from the beginning. Unfortunately their assurances have turned out to be quite untrue.