1) Not being straight isn't a mental illness, it's just a different way of feeling, like how some people cry at movies while some people laugh. 2) Homosexuals and whatever else there is fall under a certain race or sexuality. If you denied women or African-Americans their rights in our country today then you would be considered, by a dominant amount of the population, sexist/racist. By denying the group the same rights as any other human being, it's just flatly discriminatory. Not to mention it makes absolutely no sense, considering if someone didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't even be able to notice that they're gay.