John Daniel’s article ‘The Gay Cure?’ raised a number of questions in my mind. I do not argue with any of Mike King’s objections to those who claim to be able to effect a ‘cure’. To encourage or collude with anyone in denying any aspect of who or what they are seems to me quite indefensible.

It troubles me, however, that an urge to present homosexuality in a positive light, regardless of circumstances, risks creating an alternative dogma, potentially as damaging as the prejudice it seeks to challenge.

Mike King states that, whilst sexual behaviour can change within one individual, basic sexual orientation is fixed. I’m really not sure what he means by this or how he can be so certain of the idea. Whilst the concept may be seen as liberating by some, it is still a dogma of a sort; like all dogmas it risks fixing individuals into a relationship with their identity which may not be real.

There is little currency nowadays for Freud’s question mark around homosexuality. I am puzzled by this. Sexual expression in human beings clearly embraces far more than simple reproduction. However, to ignore the biological imperative seems to me questionable. In other words, I would say that there is nothing odd (or unhealthy) about same-sex attraction; I do find something slightly unexpected about the absence of opposite sex attraction; odder still when this lack of attraction turns into positive revulsion.

I knew, from the age of five, that there was a quality for me about male bodies that was absent around female bodies. I endured a childhood and adolescence desperately trying to hide my sexuality. Then in my mid-20s I ‘came out’. With hindsight, I can see that, in order to affirm my sense of identity, I found myself pressured into identifying 100 per cent with same-sex attraction. It did not seem unreasonable at the time.

I am now in my 50s. In the light of things that I have come to understand about myself, I think that this wholehearted identification was a shame, since it cut me off from questions which it might have been helpful for me to ask earlier rather than later. It was only recently, in the aftermath of a very vivid dream, that I was able to identify myself as a repressed heterosexual. This identification does not arise from some perverse form of self-hatred. It is simply the best description I can find for the situation in which I find myself. (I must add that I know that I am not alone in this. At least one friend has acknowledged a similar experience.)

This does not mean that my homosexuality is ‘wrong’; only that there is a whole area of sexual expression which I consistently deny myself. I can trace that repression back to the experience, at a very young age, of witnessing sexual abuse committed against females. Something in me revolted against ever being part of that aspect of sexuality. Until recently I might have agreed with Mike King’s view of fixed sexual orientation. Now, I simply cannot.

Please understand that this has nothing to do with changing from gay to straight (or vice versa). I am talking of the possibility of expanding my expression to encompass all and any sort of sexual possibilities. If we are honestly to understand ourselves, then the issue must be as important to those who have never had any homosexual leanings as to those who have never had any heterosexual leanings. Acknowledging any desire must be important – even if I do not then decide to act on it.

For some the answer to the question will be a resounding ‘No’. Fair enough. I do not doubt that there are those who genuinely and naturally inhabit one or other end of the sexual spectrum. It still doesn’t hurt to ask.

The implications of any sort of sexual repression are much wider than questions of sex or sexual love. When we repress any part of ourselves, that repression extends to the whole of us.

William Johnston