Former President Barack Obama reportedly floated the idea of having sexual relations with other men, and cheated on his wife Michelle Obama, according to biographer David Garrow.
Garrow told Tablet Magazine that Obama had expressed his fantasies in a letter to his girlfriend at the time, Alex McNear.
McNear showed the letter to Garrow, which had one redacted paragraph, and simply said, “It’s about homosexuality.”
“And then sometime, right about when Rising Star came out, Alex indirectly sold the original, sold those letters, and they ended up at Emory [University],” Garrow told Tablet Magazine, referring to his biography of Obama, “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.”
“So Emory put out a press release saying, ‘We’ve gotten these rare letters by Barack Obama.’” Garrow added. “And no mention of this paragraph that was too sensitive. None of the papers mentioned it. Emory didn’t mention it.”
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“So I emailed Harvey [Klehr, a longtime associate, and], said, ‘Go to the Emory archives.’ He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures,” he continued.
“So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men,” Garrow said.
Obama’s love life has been a hot topic for a while now, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, which reported on the former president’s past relationships.
Obama reportedly slept with his first post-college girlfriend Genevieve Cook and had intimate relations with her on the first date, as reported by the Daily Mail.
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Obama and Cook would allegedly do cocaine together. After breaking up, Cook reportedly began sleeping with Obama’s best friend.
Later on, the former president entered in a relationship with a white woman named, Sheila Miyoshi Jager.
Obama, according to Garrow’s “Rising Star” biography, proposed twice to Jager but was ultimately rejected both times.
In fact, the former president’s obsession with Jager stemmed even after he met his wife-to-be Michelle. However, after going 0-2, Obama eventually ended the relationship with Jager.
The Daily Mail reported that Obama kept seeing Jager even while in a relationship with Michelle. Jager, according to Garrow’s book, said Obama had his eye on becoming president since 1987, but believed he needed to “fully identify as African American,” so, therefore, he ended up marrying Michelle.
“I remember very clearly when this transformation happened, and I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president,” Jager said.
The Daily Mail also reported that Obama had considered pursuing a gay relationship while in college with an assistant professor at Occidental College, Lawrence Goldyn.
“Goldyn made a huge impact on Barry Obama,” Garrow wrote in his 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.’”
Garrow noted that three years after meeting Goldyn, “Obama wrote somewhat elusively to his first intimate girlfriend that he had thought about and considered gayness but ultimately decided that a same-sex relationship would be less challenging and demanding than developing one with the opposite sex.”
In 2009, Obama was interviewed by LGBT magazine, “The Advocate,” which asked the former president who had influenced his ideas surrounding LGBT. Obama, after his mother, named Goldyn.
“He was a wonderful guy,” Obama said. “He was the first openly gay professor that I had ever come in contact with, or openly gay person of authority that I had come in contact with.
“And he was just a terrific guy. He wasn’t proselytizing all the time, but just his comfort in his own skin and the friendship we developed helped to educate me on a number of these issues.”