I’m fed up. Our political system has been hijacked for too long by a powerful minority, who, if allowed to continue promoting their interests to everyone else’s detriment, are endangering our very pluralism.

I’m talking about heterosexual men, of course. Yes, them: the guys who get to drive most of the time and give all the after-dinner speeches. If you let them, straight men will monopolize every sound system and TV remote within reach, and I’ve heard they often expect their spouses to take their name.

Not satisfied with running virtually every government and religious institution in the world, despite the demonstrable fact that a substantial majority of the population everywhere is either female or gay, they’re now trying desperately to deny gay citizens the right to marry like their privileged selves.

Having failed in the past to prevent women from working outside the home or voting in elections, straight men are now dragging us through the same-sex debate. Their frontmen are smiling reactionaries like Conservative leader Peter MacKay and Canadian Alliance chief Stephen Harper, as well as certain bishops who, drawing on ages-old wisdom, have helpfully claimed that same-sex marriage will lead to incest or even bestiality. No wonder they’ve lost in the courts and in Parliament. But who knows what other mischief they’ll cause the body politic if we let them?

Don’t get me wrong — some of my best friends are straight males. They can be charming, resourceful, even creative. They’re good at fixing things. But they carry a heavy historical burden: after all — and this is only in recent times — Hitler, Nixon and the Osmond Brothers were all aggressively heterosexual.

Most seriously, straight guys wrote the religious book which sanctifies the actions of a jealous God, who in turn protects the interests of those who made him in their own image.

This is achieved mainly through powerful taboos against womanliness. Starting with the curse of Eve, the abhorrence of the female principle has manifested itself, in extreme form, in witch burnings and fag bashings. And it explains why practically every country in the world has an army but few have universal day care. Women who want to lead countries — Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi are two examples — must of necessity turn themselves into Alpha males, governing by fiat rather than consensus, and, as in the Falklands, prove they can blow things up as well as any red-blooded guy.

It’s time to put an end to all this. Deporting all straight men to ranches in Alberta where they can spend their days killing little animals, however tempting an idea, would probably be economically unfeasible. But at the very least, I modestly propose the immediate disenfranchising of all heterosexual men. They can have their vote restored to them only when they agree to relinquish their special privileges.

Their dominance of weekend TV programming must end, for one, and they must never again vote surrogates like John Wayne Best Actor of the Year. They must understand that Jane Austen is a better novelist than almost anybody else. Above all, they must never again attach straight-male job descriptions like King, Lord or Prince, to God.

Agreeing to this, straight men can rejoin society as full citizens, allowed to work and marry just like everyone else. While they will still be able to gather in late-night private clubs to wear funny uniforms and listen to Eminem, they must understand that they indulge in this kind of behaviour at their own risk.

With the majority rule of women and gay men, Canada will have government-funded day care in no time. No Canadians will be killed by friendly or any other kind of fire on foreign soil. We’ll have a Single Mothers Memorial Highway at the airport and a statue of Oscar Wilde outside the library. Live at Five, a Maritime television program, will get a sole female anchorperson, and Trailer Park Boys will get a major rewrite to reflect female and gay sensibilities.

On second thought, that last idea is probably too much to expect. Some things from straight male culture arenâe(TM)t salvageable.