It's time to move beyond being 'gay'

[...] As part of the Channel 4 season celebrating the 40th anniversary of the bill, Kevin Elyot (he of My Night With Reg) has written a brilliant screenplay, Clapham Junction, that weaves this complicated tapestry with skill and poignancy. Using a murder on the common as a central event, he overlays the lives of a group of people - married, single, bi, straight, gay, young, middle-aged, rich and struggling - into a nightmare of unhappiness. It's an exciting piece of work, but apart from being great telly, it starts to shake off the restrictions imposed by having to call it 'gay'. It isn't gay. And it is only an exploration of sexuality in so far as it just presents these human beings in all their confusions, certainly acknowledging our gay parallel lives, but moving far beyond that in its human understanding.

So how much longer will we have to go on being gay? Well, as long as they bully and kill us for it, we'll have to fight back. But at the same time let's find a freedom beyond the definition. Let sexuality float free of our own stereotypes. Elyot's screenplay is a fitting tribute to 40 years of change. Maybe we're nearing the end of 'the homosexual'. Maybe it was just a phase we were going through.

· Simon Fanshawe is a writer, broadcaster and co-founder of Stonewall Read more