Gays Deserve Reparation Checks By Harry Kimball Posted Apr 7, 2009 5:52 PM CDT Copied Laura Fefchak, right, and Nancy Robinson, center, of Urbandale, Iowa, react to the ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. (AP Photo) “The time has arrived to place economic reparations for gay and lesbian Americans on the political agenda,” Jacob Appel writes in the Detroit Free Press. Equality under the law is inevitable, if still a few years out; meantime, homosexuals must be compensated for their trouble. “While the financial losses” suffered “as a result of state-sanctioned discrimination may prove challenging to quantify, they are real.” “A second purpose of reparations is to express moral opprobrium,” Appel writes. A check can’t cure all the wounds of being a second-class citizen, but “the admission of collective culpability behind such payments might offer a first step toward reconciliation.” Will straight people try to game the system? No, Appel writes. We’re still far from the day when a hetero cheater “possesses enough confidence in his own sexuality to impersonate a homosexual.” Read These Next Online boo-bears go after the demo firm tearing White House apart. President Monroe's daughter wrote a desperate plea in 1839. Plane windshield partially shatters mid-flight. There's a suspect. 'Butt-breathing' could be the future for struggling patients. Report an error