New Biography: Young Obama ‘Considered Gayness’
April 25, 2017
Former President Barack Obama considered being homosexual as a young man, according to a forthcoming biography of the president.
The biography by David Garrow, “
Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama,” is set to come out on May 9. Garrow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., and is a regular contributor to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In a chapter about the former president’s two years at Occidental College, Garrow reveals a close relationship Obama had with an openly gay assistant professor named Lawrence Goldyn.
“Goldyn made a huge impact on Barry Obama,” Garrow wrote in the book. “Almost a quarter century later, asked about his understanding of gay issues, Obama enthusiastically said, ‘my favorite professor my first year in college was one of the first openly gay people that I knew…He was a terrific guy” with whom Obama developed a ‘friendship beyond the classroom.'”
The biographer added, “Goldyn years later would remember that Obama ‘was not fearful of being associated with me’ in terms of ‘talking socially’ and ‘learning from me’ after as well as in class.”
“Three years later, Obama wrote somewhat elusively to his first intimate girlfriend that he had thought about and considered gayness, but ultimately had decided that a same-sex relationship would be less challenging and demanding than developing one with the opposite sex,” Garrow wrote. “But there is no doubting that Goldyn gave eighteen-year-old Barry a vastly more positive and uplifting image of gay identity and self-confidence than he had known in Honolulu.”
Garrow recently spoke about his book on
The Jamie Weinstein Show. When asked about Obama experimenting with homosexuality, Garrow replied, “I think anyone and everyone, no matter what their role in life deserves a certain basic degree of privacy, in that context.”
