Michael Medved is an author and syndicated radio talk-show host. Left-wing activists love to make the case for gay rights by associating the struggles of today’s homosexuals with the long, heroic battle for racial justice in the Civil Rights movement.

Most of these same politically correct advocates also look with favor on demands for reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, so their insistence on the black-gay comparison raises an uncomf ortable question: why don’t they push for similar repara- tions for homosexuals?

An answer to that riddle not only exposes the ridiculous nature of equating African Americans with homosexuals as similarly suffering victim groups, but also reveals the dubious nature of any reparations drive for long-ago crimes.

The distinction between blacks and gays as two aggrieved components of the population has little to do with the discrimination against them, and everything to do with the irreducibly different nature of their group identity.

African Americans and homosexuals have suffered from violent intimidation, blatant discrimination, public ridicule, marginalization, and even brutal murder.

But racial hatred has created historic burdens that plagued families for centuries, while bigotry against sexual minorities focuses on sexual expression in the here and now.

Most obviously, any campaign for gay reparations would fall flat because no evidence eixsts whatever that today’s homosexuals are the heirs to a long, bitter heritage of discrimination that spans generations.

No one can deny that most — in fact, nearly all — gay people were produced and raised by heterosexual parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Today, those who make the case for gay adoption insist no scientific evidence exists that children raised in same-sex homes are any more likely to grow up homosexual than those raised by traditionally married parents.

This contention utterly undermines the notion that a homosexual needs to be compensated for the ancient suffering of some distant gay progenitor. He is no more likely to boast such an ancestor than any heterosexual of the same age. Black identity has everything to do with heritage, with history, and it is (for nearly all African Americans) entirely involuntary.

Consideration of the weak case for gay reparations sheds new light on the weaknesses in the more familiar case for black reparations. In both cases, advocates want to compensate people who are alive today for the undeniable suffering of others, long ago.

The fact that some blacks might claim a distant familial relationship with the oppressed makes their case only slightly less tenuous.

With blacks as well as gays, it’s invidious to single out individuals for special treatment and compensatory generosity based on group affiliation.

Heritage may confer distinctive advantages or disadvantages, but focusing on that to demand different treatment for any group from society at large remains un-American.