I woke up this morning planning the day ahead, hoping to finish a script, perhaps spend an hour in the gym (if I finish the script my treat is a brisk work-out, go figure), thinking about a friend who is unwell, and pondering, yet again, my own mortality, which creeps up on me every day. And then I read about Stuart Walker, a twenty eight year old man who police are saying may have been tied to a lamppost, beaten and burned to death, and possibly because he was gay. This crime happened in Scotland. I felt physically sick when I read this and then I felt immense anger. There is nothing that makes this atrocity acceptable, whatever the reason, it is not okay, it will never be okay. This is the kind of act I relate to the race attacks in the southern states of America, which still took place during my lifetime up to the 1960s, but not of Scotland or anywhere else and not in the twenty-first century. And I do not forget the brutal murder of Jody Dobrowski, or others killed in homophobic attacks, which are alarmingly on the rise. It was not okay then, it’s not okay now. If this grotesque act was carried out because Stuart Walker was gay, it worries me, and I’ve never been worried about being gay before, or perhaps not to the extent I am now, possibly because what was once uncommon is becoming too common. While we are aware that homosexuality is still illegal in some US states and countless countries, and homosexuals are frequently killed in the most inhumane ways in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe, I wonder if our real feelings, those of us in the apparently civilised west, are suppressed because what goes on in those countries is so other to us, we are able to detach ourselves from the awfulness, because it wouldn’t happen here, it couldn’t happen here. And now it has happened here, on great British soil, how do we feel about it? When comedians still make jokes at the expense of gay men, though mostly at the expense of lesbians (if I knew I was that funny I’d have made a career out of it), when the press and television and theatre allow audiences to applaud every time I am at the heart of another cruel joke, or the term gay is used in a derogatory way by school children and adults and few people speak out and correct them, I say I have had enough. Try substituting gay and lesbian for black, Indian, Pakistani, disabled, Jewish, Muslim, or any other minority you can think of and see what kind of response you get then. You wouldn’t dare. Well, I’ve had enough of it, enough of people not speaking out, not taking my side, (and those who do, don’t get the medals because I don’t get a medal every time I support a black, disabled or Muslim friend, because it is a given), because it is right and just that you take my side, that you support me and countless others, because if you don’t it makes me think you’re scared, that perhaps you know, in your heart that it isn’t fixed, but you can’t admit it, because if you admit it, you might have to do something about it, and it’s so much easier to say nothing than to speak out. It’s so much easier to remain silent. But speaking out allows real change to happen. So admit it. It isn’t fixed. We need to work harder, as individuals and as a society, we need to work alongside the charities and organisations and individuals, Stonewall and Diversity Role Models, teacher Elly Barnes and No to Hate Crime, we need to make it okay for our homosexual children to feel safe in the world and for their heterosexual friends to feel safe about speaking out, with no fear of harsh reprisals, but we also need to work harder with our enemies, and we need to fix it before someone else is tied to a lamppost, beaten and killed.

I’m one of the lucky ones. But in the big world, out there, it’s not fixed yet. Our heterosexual friends may think there is no problem, because they are okay with us, because they have always been okay with us, because they have gay friends in their lives, because their children grow up knowing us and know better than to call us names, but for every heterosexual person who is okay with gay, there are at least fifty others who would happily see me imprisoned, correctively raped and killed. And it’s not okay.