I see a lot of gay rights advocacy these days, and this seems to be the main method of approach: get all the heterosexual friends and family members of gays together and have them write heartfelt public appeals for equal rights for their gay loved ones. The idea being, these heterosexuals know gays--they've lived and worked with them and loved them as their own--so all the other heterosexuals reading their appeals, all those heterosexuals who haven't known gays, can trust these heterosexuals when they say, "Love is love, no matter what, and gay people are no different from you or me."

And I mean, I've seen the movie Milk, OK? I know the game plan. Get as many gays as possible to come out publicly and show the world that gays are just as normal as everyone else, that they're not dangerous creepers or weirdos or sexual deviants. And once all the heterosexuals learn that their formerly-closeted friends have been gay all along, they'll say to themselves, "Man, I didn't even know they were gay. All this time, I just thought they were normal. And hey, you know what? I guess they're still normal. They're still the same person I've always known. So I guess gayness isn't a scary, weirdo thing after all. That's great! So let's all have equal rights and stop hating each other."

And I support all of that. Raise awareness, combat ignorance, eradicate fear, level the playing field. Good, good, good.

But I just want to say: Dude. I don't need to meet a gay person to know they deserve equal rights! If I went my whole life never once encountering a homosexual person, I would still have no doubt in my mind that gays and straights need to be treated as equals. Because it just makes sense: the only thing all human beings have in common is the fact that we're all human. And it's that fact alone that we should be thinking about when we start trying to define "human rights". It makes no sense to complicate the issue with all this incidental trivia.

I mean, since when do we have to follow rules just to be human?