So-called “gay rights” aren’t about special rights or special privileges for gays; instead, they’re about ensuring that gays have the same fundamental rights as everyone else. The focus on talking about “gay rights” obscures this fact and allows others to misrepresent the subject. Gay marriage, correspondingly, is really just about marriage generally and ensuring that it is treated as the fundamental right which the Supreme Court has declared it to be.

The only “special” status gays have is something they abhor rather than seek: not being fully protected by the Constitution. In too many places, gays have no legal protection from being denied a job, a promotion, or housing merely because they are gay. It is a profound insult to tell people that their desire to enjoy the same basic rights as other Americans is really a desire to have “special” rights unavailable to others.

It’s possible that some Christians do consider housing, jobs, and medical care to be “unusual demands” — at least, when it comes to gays. If you believe homosexuality is condemned by God, perhaps you can believe that gays don’t deserve the ability to hold a job, to buy food, or to find shelter like other citizens.

It’s arguable that the point of this is the preservation of heterosexual privilege, one of the few traditional privileges remaining today. Male, Christian, and religious privileges have all been under assault through the 20th century and, to varying degrees, all have been undermined.

Their future is doubtful; heterosexual privilege, though, seems relatively secure — not absolutely secure, just apparently secure relative to the other privileges.

What is it about some people that they need to feel superior to someone ...anyone? There are men who need women to be inferior, Christians who need non-Christians to be inferior, religious believers who need nonbelievers and atheists to be inferior, citizens who need foreigners to be inferior...and heterosexuals who need gays to be inferior. Why can’t those who are different be equal in their differences?

When interracial couples fought for the right to marry each other, were they asking for equal rights or special rights? They wanted the same rights as other couples, but religious conservatives insisted they really wanted special rights. After all, no one was allowed to marry members of another race, so all were treated equally. We find the same arguments being made today and they are just as wrong now as they were then.