On the original topic: Making jokes about any minority group requires several social factors to be considered. Generally, I try to live by the rule that any humour of mine has to
punch up, not down. Don't aim to make jokes at the expense of a victim group, make jokes at the expense of the group that victimizes others. If a victim group tells you that a joke about them isn't funny, you should listen to them in the way that you would wish others to listen to you about how you feel.
Empathy shouldn't be a difficult requirement. If your response to someone saying "I didn't like your joke" is "tough snowflake" or some equivalent, you're no longer entitled to surprise when those same people
hate you. You invited it upon yourself by showing them how little you care.
As for the legality of it all, I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you as someone who lives in a country with hate speech that it doesn't interfere with day-to-day life. Hate Speech in Canada is reserved for those who deliberately advocate inflicting harm on discernable groups. You have to pull a full-on Hitler and hop onto a podium, screaming bloody murder about "those others" that you despise. It is a law that is, subsequently, rarely used.
I would not want to make racist humour illegal (unless it advocates violence against specific ethnic groups), but I would like to point out that the same free speech which protects a comedian's right to say it
also protects a critic's right to
object to it. If someone makes a shitty joke, let em' suffer the social consequences for doing so. That alone is often more than enough, no need for the lawman to step in most of the time.
The argument of "there isn't a straight pride month" is a flawed one. The same argument applies to "why isn't there a white history month", or an "international men's day" - it's because every other month of the year by default celebrates the 'norm'.
I suppose I just think that if you draw attention to yourself you deserve the positive, and negative attention from that result. However, I 100% support being PROUD of yourself, no matter if you're gay, straight, or other. However, pride should be personalized, not externalized and shoved in peoples faces. I am perfectly okay with wanting equal treatment, but if you act like you're 'above' someone because you're special, that's not 'equal'. How I see it, you give what you put out. If you give respect, you should get it in most aspects, if you don't give respect, you don't deserve it.
LGBT Pride Month began as a result of the 1969 Stonewall riots as a way of preventing LGBTQ+ voices from being silenced by the overwhelming majority of the population. Pride events then began to follow all over the United States, then the world, which subsequently evolved into parades and LGBT Pride Month. These events are now instead ways of either highlighting continuing injustices or celebrating an oft suppressed identity simply by opting to exist.
The reason there's no such thing as a heterosexual pride month is that heterosexuality was never suppressed or silenced, nor does it continue to face suppression or silence. Script is correct, the comparison is absurd. The reason the LGBT even
have a distinct culture in comparison to the rest of society is
because they became a differentiated, suppressed group in their own right.
They were othered by the establishment so hard that they developed their own culture in response. LGBT Pride Month exists for that reason: To highlight and give voices to those who often don't get to have them.
The most legitimate criticism of pride parades is that some of them are becoming overcommercialized. Corporations are taking over their meaning to sell merch rather than focus on identity issues. The response has been a growing movement of intersectionality and critical theory being put into pride parades.
As for "shoved in people's faces", you're free not to attend LGBTQ+ pride parades. Nobody is forcing you to go or watch them. You are typically warned well ahead of time on social media and by the news which streets will be locked down for the parade. You can literally choose not to witness or attend it, and for most people, it comes and goes completely uneventfully. Pride should be expressed however one wishes to express it. If you have no issue with ticker-tape parades, the Macy's day parades, military parades, or other forms of outward expression of pride, then you should have no issue with LGBTQ+ pride parades.
Finally, I have no idea what one would even celebrate at a "straight pride" festival. The complete lack of oppression? How they can be a part of major religious institutions without fear, like on every other day of the year? This comparison is inherently absurd and ignores several years of history. There's no heterosexual version of Stonewall and there likely never will be.