It is almost exactly 10 years since the Sun declared it would no longer reveal a person's sexual preferences unless there was "an overwhelming public interest". Three days earlier the paper had demanded: "Tell us the truth Tony: are we being run by a gay mafia?" The private lives of two gay cabinet ministers had been all over the tabloids: Peter Mandelson and Nick Brown, both of whom now find themselves back at the top table.
I was then working in the Downing Street press office. I'd spent a long weekend successfully trying to save Brown's career after the News of the World tried to destroy it with the unreliable "confessions" of a former rent boy. Seeing the tabloids beat a hasty retreat was deeply satisfying. It seemed that a sorry chapter in the history of British journalism had come to an end.
Yet now, a decade later, Mandelson's return to government has been greeted with some wearily familiar homophobic comment. The Daily Telegraph hails "Lord Mandy" who enjoys the "reassuring daily company" of his "handsome Brazilian boyfriend". Simon Heffer prefers "Lord Rumba of Rio". Richard Littlejohn, no surprise there, talks of the former EU trade commissioner's sumptuous Brussels home "in the Rue des Jeunes Garçons". He also recalls the "identikit Village People moustache" Mandelson used to sport, while admitting he had one himself until he started getting fan mail from blokes. Even an editorial in this newspaper reported that Mandelson had "sashayed back into the cabinet". There is far worse in many blogs and the message is not lost on the public. One recent caller to Radio 4's Any Questions referred caustically to "the princess of darkness".
Why is it that Mandelson is subject to a level of bitchy innuendo that would never be tolerated about any other gay man or woman in public life? Ten years ago, counting the number of gay people in the cabinet and the House of Commons was a popular sport. Today an MP's sexuality has become an irrelevance.
It may be that Mandelson's determination not to be pigeon-holed by his sexual preference has perversely encouraged people to do just that. Nick Brown, who was agriculture minister at the time of the foot-and-mouth crisis, often introduces himself as "the fat poof who used to be in charge of cows". Self-deprecating humour has never been Mandelson's strong suit.
Those of us who urged him a decade ago to be more open so the issue would just go away were rebuffed. "My private life is not secret but it is private," was the furthest he was prepared to go. Maybe if he'd come up with something closer to: "Yeah, so what?" he wouldn't still be facing such ugly taunts. It doesn't excuse what he has to put up with but it may go some way towards explaining it.