Dear Sir
 
Talking in a newspaper, recently (The Sunday Times, January 17), about his film “A Single Man”, the film’s Director, Tom Ford, who is also a famous fashion designer, says “it’s not a gay story, he just happens to be gay.“
 
Why do film directors feel the need to add these qualifications to works about gay characters?  “A Single Man” was written by Christopher Isherwood, a very out gay man, and the main character George is gay.  The film’s star Colin Firth was then quoted as saying  “ ...when he’s asked not to come to his lover’s funeral – that could be any secret or inappropriate lover.”  This ignores the fact that the film is set in the 60’s, and until the introduction of the Civil Partnership Act in 2005, the fear, of being barred from the funeral, or hospital bedside of a lover was a very real threat, and in many cases a fact, for all gay people.  These comments diminish the problems that faced the LGBT community at that time, together with the battles they had, and still do have, to gain true equality   
 
Film directors do not feel the need to say that their heterosexual films are not heterosexual stories, or that their characters “just happen to be” straight.  Lessons are still to be learned.
 
An even sadder postscript to this is the profile of Tom Ford in this week’s Sunday Times (31st January) in which it says, “Ford is apt to object to being called gay. He claimed to have slept with girls from the age of 15 until he was 25. ‘ I guess I’m gay because I’ve lived with a man for the past 23 years. But if you said give me 10 words to describe yourself, gay wouldn’t be one of them.’ ”
 
I know the 10 words I’d use to describe him, starting with pathetic.
 
Yours faithfully
 
Andrew Brettell