I remembered this little incident after reading Matthew Parris’s article in The Times on Thursday. He used his column to out himself out as “posthomosexualist” and chronicled his boredom with any talk about gay rights – all the battles have been won, he wrote, what’s left to say? We’ve got the political changes we’ve wanted, so we gays should stop banging on about being gay.

I’m not so confident that we can afford to be so complacent. I’m not so sure that someone being gay is not an issue for other people; old fears still lurk. Were the taxi driver’s remarks, for example, a) a veiled bigoted response from someone reacting unfavourably to my sexuality? Or b) a good-hearted attempt at dealing with his own discomfort and awkwardness. Ever the optimist, I choose the latter.

And there is a lot to be optimistic about. Much of what Parris wrote I agree with. In the 40 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the passing of gay rights on to the statute book has been a triumph. Gay couples have more security and equality thanks to civil partnerships, and gays are now treated with fairness before the eyes of the law. So as a gay man, I celebrate this and feel lucky to be alive in Britain in 2007.

But it is important to draw a distinction between legal change and the shift in attitudes. It is quicker to pass a law than achieve the necessary movement of public opinion – and attitudes still lag behind the law. So we can’t yet give ourselves a proverbial pat on the back.

The next stage is trickier. It’s how to make people understand that gays are utterly normal; it’s how to change outlooks so that it never crosses people’s minds that to be gay is to be so different or alien; or to stare if two men hold hands, or to do a double take if a man says “meet my husband”; it’s how to be able to be honest about yourself without people accusing you of “ramming your homosexuality down my throat”. Hop over to the Netherlands and sexuality is not such an issue; but here in Britain things are different. I am still often referred to as the “gay pop idol – Will Young” (very much in that order of importance); yet in other countries the gay word doesn’t come into it – someone’s sexuality is regarded rightly as a being an irrelevance or unnoteworthy.

When I made my decision to be open about my sexuality, the overwhelmingly positive response astounded me. But sadly you still read headlines in papers that say so and so “Admits to being gay” or “Confesses to being homosexual”, as if saying you prefer to sleep with men is an admission of some guilty, sordid shame. Coming out should just be a statement of fact – I have red hair, I drink tea, I sleep with the same sex.

Coming out should just be a statement of fact – I have red hair, I drink tea, I sleep with the same sex.

I’m coming out as a post-homosexualist. Forty years (tomorrow) after the 1967 law ending the absolute prohibition of homosexuality, 13 years after the reduction of the age of consent from 21 to 18, six years after the further reduction from 18 to 16, and two years after the arrival of civil partnerships, I have finally become bored with the whole damn thing. Bored, not with being gay, but with talking about it. I blame Tony Blair.

Do cats witter endlessly on about being cats? Do redheads drive us to distraction with their thoughts on being ginger? How many serious comment columns in the editorial pages of newspapers are devoted to the musings of straight men on what it is to be a heterosexual? No, they just get on with it – with being cats, redheads or straights. Such things are for the lifestyle sections of weekend magazines, not rubbing shoulders with the debate on global warming, housing or the terrorist threat.

Fellow-queers: stop moaning. How interesting is any of this to the rest of the world any more? Other groups out there have it worse than we do in Britain. We’ve got the political changes we asked for. Social change will take longer but it’s happening, steadily. Kidding ourselves that we inhabit some sort of a gulag is making it harder, not easier, for the next generation to relax about their sexuality. Let’s remind them that in the whole history of mankind there has been no better, luckier, time or place to be gay than Britain in 2007.

Do cats witter endlessly on about being cats? Do redheads drive us to distraction with their thoughts on being ginger? How many serious comment columns in the editorial pages of newspapers are devoted to the musings of straight men on what it is to be a heterosexual? No, they just get on with it – with being cats, redheads or straights.

The next stage is trickier. It’s how to make people understand that gays are utterly normal; it’s how to change outlooks so that it never crosses people’s minds that to be gay is to be so different or alien; [..] yet in other countries the gay word doesn’t come into it – someone’s sexuality is regarded rightly as a being an irrelevance or unnoteworthy.

But don't let us copy their idiocy. They may think we're a group, that it matters if you're gay, but are we and does it any more? Do we have anything in common with each other just because we're gay? Are we really proud of being gay? What's to be proud of in just being something? It mattered then, when we weren't citizens. But is there any sense in it now? Sure there's the tribe. It's fun to be with people who share our experience. But does that have any more meaning than dining with mates who all play golf, or all went to university together, or are all in the Labour party? I begin to wonder. I love fag dinners. But is that really the basis for politics? We must fight prejudice.

But half the gay men I know can't be bothered to get off their insular little arses and move out of the gilded ghetto to lift a finger to do that. They'd much rather shag and drink and revel in pleasure. And why not? Just don't pretend it's politics. It's politics where you get imprisoned for it. Go to Poland or Russia or Egypt and then being gay matters.

Gay sex has changed the world. Agony aunts now get letters from young men who, on the way to describing whatever problem they have, let slip that they shag with their mates. They're not gay. They're not worried, in fact. They just sleep with their mates. There is no nobility to cock-sucking. Now we've cleared the way to equality, it's time to say to the world that who you sleep with doesn't describe your sexuality any more than it doesn't.

Yet if the quality of life for homosexual adults in Britain has moved on, one tricky demographic remains. We still have a muddled, irrational and inadequate response to gay adolescents. While a generation of gay men and women has grown to enjoy confidence and widespread acceptance, there remain members of a younger slice of society that see themselves as "the only gays in the village" - and they sometimes are.

The gay community has partially itself to blame here. The concept of youth has become fetishised within the metropolitan gay idyll, driven by aspirations to a ceaselessly fashionable party lifestyle aesthetic. A whole swath of postpubescent gay men feel disenfranchised by this projection. Who is going to take on the mantle of looking after gay adolescents?

Shocking suicide statistics underline the predicament. Research has shown that 40% of gay boys bullied at school have gone on to attempt suicide. Initiatives such as the superb Barnardo's campaign against homophobic bullying go some way to mending the problems, but these are too deep to be tackled even by the best efforts of charities.

Homophobic school bullying should be dealt with in exactly the same way as racial bullying: a zero tolerance policy needs enshrining in legislation, and teachers need re-educating in how to deal with homophobia. Name calling on the grounds of sexuality is to this day accepted by many as legitimate fodder for comedy. It is far from it. Gay counselling services should be free for teenagers. Sex education itself should place equal importance on homosexuality.

and teachers need re-educating in how to deal with homophobia

But don't let us copy their idiocy. They may think we're a group, that it matters if you're gay, but are we and does it any more? Do we have anything in common with each other just because we're gay? Are we really proud of being gay? What's to be proud of in just being something? It mattered then, when we weren't citizens. But is there any sense in it now? Sure there's the tribe. It's fun to be with people who share our experience. But does that have any more meaning than dining with mates who all play golf, or all went to university together, or are all in the Labour party? I begin to wonder. I love fag dinners. But is that really the basis for politics? We must fight prejudice.

One random, prejudicially deranged, individual on the pebbles might just shout or hit or incite his mates to hate, where we see love. So yes, to the intolerant this new tolerance is a provocation. They get more intolerant, more violent and sometimes they kill.

Homophobic school bullying should be dealt with in exactly the same way as racial bullying: a zero tolerance policy needs enshrining in legislation, and teachers need re-educating in how to deal with homophobia. Name calling on the grounds of sexuality is to this day accepted by many as legitimate fodder for comedy. It is far from it. Gay counselling services should be free for teenagers. Sex education itself should place equal importance on homosexuality.

The gay community has partially itself to blame here. The concept of youth has become fetishised within the metropolitan gay idyll, driven by aspirations to a ceaselessly fashionable party lifestyle aesthetic. A whole swath of postpubescent gay men feel disenfranchised by this projection. Who is going to take on the mantle of looking after gay adolescents?

...

Gay children and young people have become perhaps the last forgotten minority. They have to muddle their way through this stuff by themselves. Is anyone in the country brave enough to stand up for them?

Somehow, a gay adolescent is not gay until he's "muddled through" on his own and finally declared his or her gayness to the world. At which point, the psychological scars may take $150 an hour to heal.

To think this came from a Brit...a country better known for the quality of its fruit than the state of California!

You guys have no idea how pissed off this thread has had me for the past few days. I had been trying to gather my thoughts and make sure I came across as coherent as possible because I was ABSOLUTELY SEETHING!!!

Those campaigns come and go, and all of this crap was already written before about Jews, Greeks, Poles and all the other peoples who were supposed to "integrate" themselves.