They hate us, they hate us not.

Heterosexuals don't know how easy they've got it. There's no heterophobia, no job discrimination, no centuries-old pronouncements from a Supreme Being declaring them personas non grata. And when they read the newspaper, they don't need a PhD to figure out what's going on.

A five-year-old can understand heterosexual news stories. "Chilean Bus Plunges Off Cliff." "Storms Hit Miami Coastline." "Lindsay Lohan Has a Firecrotch." Nothing convoluted about these. They make their point simply and concisely. You don't need to concentrate or massage your temples to get what they're saying. As opposed to, say, your typical homosexual news story:

"Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue to Meet with Republican Leadership to Plot Course for Overturning Ruling Striking Down Constitutional Amendment Banning Same-Sex Marriage."

Got that? It's a little tougher. In fact, it's less a sentence than the glossary from the Congressional Report. Somewhere between the first word and the last, your mind starts to protest. Don't we have enough words for a sentence yet? Your attention wanders. Isn't there something tasty in the fridge? Isn't there laundry to be done? This could explain why so few gays are politically active: obviously somebody here is an asswipe, but it's impossible to figure out who.

This could explain why heteros think gays are vapid. If we had a gay man and a straight man sitting side by side reading the newspaper, the difference would be painfully obvious. The happy hetero would be scanning the headlines, saying stuff like, "Whoa, ain't that the truth!" or "Gosh, isn't that interesting?" while the gay guy is holding his well-coiffed head and screaming "WHAAA?"

The problem with gay news stories is the double negatives. Frankly, I'm surprised newspapers can get away with it. My parents used to yell at me if I said something like, "I don't want no damn chicken."  This headline has like fifteen negatives in it, and without graph paper and a Sharpy I don't see any way of figuring out who did what. It's totally unfair. You don't see them in hetero stories. Baba Wawa doesn't dispute Meredith's theory that Star's husband isn't gay. Katie doesn't disagree with dissenting opinions to press reports that Tom didn't use a stunt double to consummate their marriage. Paula doesn't uphold Randy's denial of Ryan's contention that Simon has perky man-boobs.

Meanwhile, this is just the tip of the iceberg. What happens as the Georgia case gathers steam? You'll be laying on the beach sipping a Frappuccino and trying to get through this: "The Supreme Court today quashed an appeal of a lower court decision upholding the overturning of a ruling striking down a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage."

At this point even Stephen J. Hawking is flipping to the comics. It makes Sudoku look like a receipt from The Dollar Store. But recently a friend told me about this trick to make sense of difficult headlines: start at the end and replace the clauses that you understand with either the word "GOOD" or "BAD."

On the first pass, this line becomes "The Supreme Court today quashed an appeal of a lower court decision upholding the overturning of a ruling striking down BAD." "A ruling striking down BAD" is obviously GOOD, and overturning GOOD is BAD. After twenty or thirty minutes, a readable sentence emerges: "The Supreme Court today was BAD."

See -- works like a charm! Sure, you won't exactly be able to share the details at parties, but you got the gist. Besides, it's kind of fun . . . and it's suspenseful. You won't know till you're finished exactly how the government feels about you. Sound familiar? It's like that old "He loves me, he loves me not" flower thing, except it's about you and Clarence Thomas.

If you want to stick with holding your head and screaming "WHAAA?," I think we'll all understand.