YOUR report, "Gay doctor harassed at work" (Bury Times Christmas Issue) will have made disturbing reading for many people, not least for Gay people and their families.

Dr Nicholas Priestley's is a high profile case of harassment. If a well-respected and professionally competent consultant neuro-psychologist such as he can be treated so disgracefully by other healthcare professionals at High Bank Care Ltd - and later in a similar way by the industrial tribunal to which he appealed - one wonders what might happen to another Gay employee there or, more seriously, to a patient perceived to be Gay.

The spokesperson for High Bank Care Ltd. might think that Dr Priestley's experience is "an old story which is not relevant now" But it is very relevant now - and for the future!

There is no such place as a "Gay-Free Zone", as many recent national newspaper reports indicate.

What is reported to have taken place at High Bank is an adult version of the very same bully-boy tactics that torment and plague many Gay adolescents in schools, playgrounds and elsewhere and affect people in employment who can be dismissed - with little redress if any - just for being Gay.

No-one is born homophobic: such an attitude is caught from, and taught by, others and needs to be unlearned and replaced at an early age by accurate information and relevant education. It could be a long, slow process - prejudice dies hard - but it needs to happen if the harassment to which Dr Preistley was apparently subjected - and the mindless cruelty which countless Gay adolescents and adults can suffer daily - are to be countered successfully.

CHRISTINE HOLT,

Newcombe Road,

Holcombe Brook, Bury.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.