WASHINGTON. Did Barack Obama have gay sexual fantasies as a young man? This is the question raised by a letter he wrote when he was 21 and now published without omissions since New York Post, the tabloid of the Murdoch empire. In November 1982, the former president wrote to his then girlfriend Alex McNear, with whom he had had an affair during his stay at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and addressed the issue of homosexuality, speaking of his “androgynous” mind » and revealing that she loved «making love with men every day, but in the imagination». For conservative tabloids, like the New York Post and the Daily Mail which immediately took up the news, is the admission of an undisclosed sexual fantasy, which now Donald Trump and the Republicans could ride in the electoral campaign. For others, however, Obama would allude to an intellectual or spiritual connection with men.
“As far as homosexuality is concerned – the letter continues – I must say that I believe this is an attempt to distance oneself from the present, perhaps a refusal to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life”. “My mind – he writes in another passage – is largely androgynous and I hope to make it even more so that I think in terms of people, not as women as opposed to men”. Obama seems to be expressing here his desire for a perspective that understands people as a whole, rather than separating them into gender categories.
“But returning to the body – he confesses – I acknowledge that I was made a man, and physically in life, and I accept that contingency”.
The letter recently resurfaced after Obama biographer Pulitzer Prize winner David Garrow gave a lengthy interview about the former commander in chief. McNear had ‘deleted’ the most salacious passages of the missive, preserved by Emory University, which does not allow it to be photographed or removed. But Harvey Klehr, a friend of Garrow’s, transcribed them and sent them to the biographer as well as the tabloid.
Garrow explained that there is nothing unusual about Obama’s youthful musings. “I’m a historian, not a psychologist, but I think it’s public knowledge that a (vast?) majority of human beings have sexual fantasies!” she replied to the New York Post.
In the past, Obama had spoken out against same-sex marriage. In 2004, the future president declared: “I don’t think marriage is a civil right.” And he had argued that homosexuality “is not a choice.” Then, when he arrived in the White House, he changed his mind by helping to celebrate the federal legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015.