Letter: Ron Davies' courage

Sir: I was amazed by the fundamentalism of Mary Braid's piece on Ron Davies ("A very high-risk strategy indeed", 22 June). In viewing his sexual confusion as a tragedy and his quest for psychiatric support as some kind of denial or defence, she puts the debate about sexual orientation back by at least a decade.

What Davies has said about the ambivalence of his orientation and his compulsive behaviour sounds wholly plausible. It equates absolutely with Freud's belief in a latent bisexual potential existing in all of us, with the findings of the 1948 Kinsey Report into male sexual behaviour, and with much contemporary research into gender and sexuality.

And yes, it is confusing. A current of same-sex attraction can be triggered by numerous life events, and many people will change positions on the heterosexual-homosexual continuum during the course of their lives. To see this as morally weak or a failure to "face up to the truth" seems reductive and reactionary - an attempt to maintain the false divide between the orientations that traditional homophobia depends on.

Given his public profile, and the fact that he's a politician, Ron Davies's admission to being confused would seem to be an act of unusual courage rather than folly.

CHRIS MILLS

Bath

The writer is a psychotherapist