Straight Pride: It’s a daft concept, and most people who believe in it are stupid. But you can’t just say that — you need the evidence. So, I went and found it, by looking up tons of ‘straight pride’ pages on Facebook. And now, like a war-weary soldier, I’m going to recount some of the horrors I’ve witnessed with you.

The first thing you notice about straight pride groups are their poor grasp on graphic design. The second thing you notice is that the graphics won’t make any sense.

My personal favourite in all of the groups I saw, is a picture of chickens, captioned: “I just love the beauty of this painting of what makes a true family”. But what point are you trying to bloody make? “The Bible says a hen and a cock, not uh… men who like cock?” Anyway, it’s not like chickens have well-functioning family units. They eat their chicks for a start. And commit adultery. In fact, you probably couldn’t do a sequel to Chicken Run, because in the wild Ginger would have devoured her eggs while Rocky was playing away from home.

Being gay in a hetero-pride group means being permanently confused by straight people’s priorities. Take this meme, posted by a ‘heterosexual pride’ page with thousands of likes, which demands that street races are legalized before gay marriage. It’s almost as if they’ve just watched 2 Fast, 2 Furious and thought: ‘Yes, this is more important than other people’s human rights’. It’s like something out of a Top Gear presenter’s fevered wet dream. The closest I can come to understanding it is by pretending that it’s a very clever dig at LGBTQ culture generally. It says: Paul going drag racing? Yes. RuPaul’s Drag Race? No.

Another noticeable thing is that these Facebook communities accidentally make not being straight appear much better than being straight. One image, posted by ‘Heteros Inspiring Pride’, mocked up the fictional town of Rainbowland, USA. The kicker is that Rainbowland is awesome. It has nature, housing, good transport, recycling, even a soup kitchen for the hungry. All it does is make straight people seem like poor town-planners. Top tip: if you want to be self-satisfied about being straight, don’t point out what gay people could do better.

Making heterosexuality sound relatively lame is a common mistake for the Straight Priders. Every post on one group that I found was an article complaining about the LGBTQ community, accompanied with a caption which would make you want to join the LGBTQ community. One example, “You must bow down to the rainbow sword of justice!”, is honestly something that I want to put on my Twitter bio. Another — “we’re speeding down the train of immorality” — sounds like an absolute blast however you cut it. It’s ironic, given the stereotype that gay men are over-dramatic, that this lot couldn’t even post an article without moaning about the “rainbow sword chopping off the heads of unbelievers”.

One grievance stands out among all others. “When do we get a parade?” they each ask one another. The answer, though, is simple. You can have a Straight Pride when you lazy bastards go out and organize one. You can’t expect us gays to do it for you. We have enough work acting as your wedding planners because you can’t do it yourselves.

Of course, the real barrier to a heterosexual parade is that no-one would be interested. It’d be tragic. If gay pride can be like a big party, hetero pride would be those awkward few hours at the end where everyone cool has left, and the only alcohol around is cans of lukewarm Stella.

One exchange I spotted very nearly hit on this. A post asked: “Why has this group gone dead?” The top commentator replied: “Well, what is there really to talk about?”. Exactly. There was nearly a lightbulb going off over these guys’ heads. (It’d be an energy-saving one though, because they were a bit dim.) They were on the edge of an epiphany — on the cusp of understanding that straight people don’t need pride, because they don’t face discrimination for being straight. You need pride when you face genuine bigotry for who you are. Pride is a reaction to being hated; Pride and prejudice, not Pride-because-we- don’t-experience-any-form-of-prejudice. In the end, however, they both decided to try and rekindle the conversation by talking about “being straight”. Needless to say the discussion didn’t last very long.

Straight pride groups are ridiculous, ultimately because the concept is ridiculous. It’s telling that of all the groups and pages I saw, not one genuinely aimed to organize a celebration of heterosexuality. Mostly, they simply served as places for homophobes to congregate online. They are hateful, silly spaces — but they are also hilarious, too.