After reading
Avoid Ethnocentrism and realizing that the closest equivalent to this node about heterosexism is the node
heterosexism itself. So I'm here to teach you noders a lesson.
While I am not sure that heterosexism and ethnocentrism are necessarily the same thing (or rather that heterosexism is a type of ethnocentrism), this writeup was moved here by an editor so here it will stay, I suppose.
AVOID HETEROSEXISM
Heterosexism in your writeups is bad. Just like ethnocentrism in your writeups. Realize that not all noders/readers are heterosexual. Nodes such as How to pick up men (sorry to pick on this node, I actually found it very amusing, but I need an example) should at least be prefaced with a disclaimer along this vein, "This node is intended for women seeking to pick up men. We do not suggest that men attempt to be 6 foot Asian redheads in order to pick up men, nor do we suggest that they have enormous breasts."
In other words, if you are going to be writing a writeup about relationship advice, relationships in general, or anything that has an impact on people in a relationship (i.e., disease transmission, marriage issues, etc.), be sure that you think to yourself first, "Does my writeup only pertain to heterosexuals? Am I able to add more information that will make it of more use to LGBT people? If not, shouldn't I address that in the writeup to reflect that this node is incomplete and could use more input from someone better suited to address the needs of LGBT people?"
Ideally, when writing a node, one should ignore everything one knows about the context of the node and assume that the reader could be anyone. While sometimes this does not enable one to add any more depth to a node, only clarification, occasionally one will find that there is an entirely separate unexplored topic within a node for LGBT people.
Likewise, LGBT noders should not assume that people reading their nodes, specifically, their gay related nodes, are LGBT themselves. In many ways heterosexism is a type of ethnocentrism. There exist nuances in the LGBT culture that many heterosexuals are unaware of, and therefore even if you are writing a gay themed node you should be sure to thoroughly elucidate any terms that heterosexuals will find confusing or ambiguous. Likewise for heterosexual noders, though there are far fewer words or phrases that will be unknown to LGBT people because of the pervasiveness of "heterosexual culture" (if such a thing can be said to exist).
Also, do not assume that everyone wants to marry or that everyone can marry. This is both ethnocentric and heterosexist. Making a blanket statement such as, "Since gays aren't allowed to marry..." or something is often ethnocentric, because there are countries that -do- allow gay marriage, and likewise, there are parts of certain countries that also allow it.
There really isn't much more that can be said to prevent heterosexism on E2. The main key is to always keep in mind while writing a node that E2 has a diverse audience and that your writeups should take these diversities into consideration, whether they be of sexual orientation/identity, race, religion, ethnicity, etc.
For more information on how one can fix a writeup after identifying that it is heterosexist, read heterosexism.