I was pretty shocked today, whilst watching the short-course World Swimming Championships, to hear one of the BBC's commentators draw attention to a couple of the male swimmers after a race, who helped each other unzip their full body swimsuits, saying "I'm not sure about these guys helping each other unzip. Seems a bit...strange to me".

It probably won't even be picked up on, mainly because homophobia is never given the same status as other prejudices. Hell, it's the one that's a 'phobia', rather than an 'ism' - racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, ageism, even, I've heard, fatism - which has always implied that it's not really an offence. You can't help what irrational fears a person has, right?

Oh, there's Islamaphobia and xenophobia, I guess. But disliking Muslims for being Muslim is almost socially acceptable compared to disliking black people for being black. And xenophobia is racism against the French, which isn't just socially acceptable, it's mandatory.