Has there ever been a bleaker midwinter? If we're not going to be detained without charge for 42 days or banged up in a spangly new super-prison, we'll be having our bags searched as we travel to our suicide-bomb-proof shopping mall, except the quickening recession means we'll have nowt to spend. Can the Government please issue a dash of light with its buckets of dark. Because, seriously, it's getting me down.

I'm not joking when I say the only moment of brightness for months has been Christopher Biggins winning I'm a Celebrity... Wobbling down the jungle bridge, bubbling over with emotion (as he is every quarter-hour), to receive a big fat gay kiss from his partner, Neil. My heart leapt at how far we've come as a nation for his sexuality to be so unremarkable. Even the Daily Mail, wary perhaps that Biggins won by popular vote, celebrated his “kind heart and winning humour”.

Recently the camp comic Alan Carr spoke of growing up as a mincing embarrassment to his dad, a former professional footballer and manager of Northampton Town. But now his father's shame has lifted when he sees how his son is accepted by a new generation of sportsmen, players like Stuart Pearce and Joey Barton, who tap up Carr Sr for tickets to his son's gigs.

Last week was the second anniversary of civil partnerships in Britain and I read about a pair of hairdressers, the first gays to wed in their town, recount how after their well-publicised ceremony they were accosted in a pub by the local rugby team. “Are you those blokes in the paper?” they were asked. The couple nodded nervously. But the players simply shook their hands and offered warm congratulations.

These are not victories for dreary, leaden and lampoonable political correctness, but of love over hate. Which is why Brighton council's decision this week to prohibit concerts that incite racist or homophobic violence should be applauded. While no BNP-supporting boot-boy band would get a council licence anywhere, there has been more tolerance for Jamaican reggae stars such as Buju Banton and Sizzla, famous for those toe-tapping lyrics “Shot battybwoy, my big gun boom” about murdering gay men.

It is time to challenge the hierarchy of discrimination that puts the rights of racial minorities and religious groups high above those of women and gay rights. Too often culture or faith are cited as excuses for attitudes that would never be forgiven in, for example, white working-class men.

According to Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, Jamaica has one of the most repressive attitudes to homosexuality in the world. Gays are subject to violent attacks, rapes, even murders, that are ignored by police, unsurprisingly, since every Jamaican political party extols anti-gay policies. In an opinion poll a few years back, 96 per cent of the country agreed that homosexuality should remain illegal. When Jamaican dance hall acts gee up their audience with incitements to burn gay men or hang lesbians it is considered no more controversial than, say, James Brown exhorting his crowd to “Get on down!”

You may think this has no wider implications. But just take this altercation that happened in a London primary school playground. Two boys were in the midst of a furious argument. Boy 1: “You're a batty-boy!” Boy 2: “What are you talking about? That isn't even a proper word!” Boy 1: “That is a Jamaican word! You are insulting Jamaican people. You racist!” Boy 1 (black) gathers a few of his friends, surrounds Boy 2 (white), jostling him and chanting “racist”. After a lengthy grilling in the head's office, the white boy was acquitted of racism, but nothing was said about the other child's crude, homophobic insult.

Recently I was chatting to a nine-year-old, asking how his brother was getting on at his new secondary school. “He doesn't like it,” said the child. “It's an all-boys school and he thinks it's [he whispered as he spelt out the letters] G.A.Y.”

Of course, homophobic remarks are made by kids from every background. But I wonder why, given the number of school assemblies one attends on the evils of racism, via Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and slavery, gay-bashing in schools could not also be publicly addressed. It would not take some toe-curling communal reading of Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin, merely an assertion that calling little girls who hold hands “lezzas” or a boy who doesn't play football “queer” is hateful and intolerant.

Stonewall reports that less than a quarter of schools address homophobic bullying, despite the inevitability that children in every single one — even faith schools — will turn out to be gay. Stonewall has a brilliantly matter-of-fact campaign slogan: “Some people are gay. Get over it!”, which chucks the abuse back into the speaker's face and damns him as uncool. My sons, whose extended family is bulging with lesbian aunts and gay dads and god-dads, respond to insults with “Well, what's wrong with being gay?” to which they seldom get an answer.

If darling Biggins can leave the jungle to love and unthinking tolerance, why do we not set about helping young people to have a less painful crossing?

Last week, Times readers expressed horror that I allow my nine-year-old to watch sweary old Gordon Ramsay. I should point out I'm a keen censor of violence and shows with, as the announcer warns us thrillingly, “scenes of a sexual nature right from the start”. And recently I had a blush-making half-hour with an IT person deciding what grade of prudishness to set our family computer's firewall.

“OK, so no porn or nasties,” he said. “But are you going to allow lingerie pictures and ordinary nudity?” Er, no, I mean, yes... I'm still not sure what was right.

Swearing is a trickier area. Programmes we enjoy together mostly feature the real world veneered with showbiz such as The Apprentice and Dragon's Den. But above all else we love food shows. So real-life-cookery hybrids like Jamie Oliver's School Dinners and Gordon's Kitchen Nightmares and F Word are utter bliss. The question is not why do I let children watch these shows, but why are they rendered unsuitable by so much needless effing and jeffing?

Anyway, how do you keep fragile ears from foul words? Said nine-year-old was at a recent Millwall match when a substitute of comic girth was brought on. I asked my son if the crowd shouted “Who ate all the pies?” “No,” he said in utter innocence. “They just called him a fat c***.”

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