Update, Aug. 14, 2023 at 6:26 PM:
Former President Barack Obama told an ex-girlfriend he had an “androgynous” mind and he believed he was both male and female.
In a letter to ex-girlfriend Alex McNear in 1982, Obama said he fantasized about having sex with men daily to escape the “endless farce of earthly life.”
Obama and McNear dated when they were students at Occidental College in Los Angeles. They broke up in 1981.
A year later, a conflicted Obama sent Mcnear a letter explaining that he fantasized daily about sleeping with men.
In the now-infamous letter, the then 21-year-old college student wrote, “In regard to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life. You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination.”
Obama also told McNear his “mind is androgynous to a great extent” — meaning he considered himself both male and female.
He wrote:
“I hope to make it more so until I can think in terms of people, not women as opposed to men. But, in returning to the body, I see that I have been made a man, and physically in life, I choose to accept that contingency.”
Newsweek magazine featured Obama on the cover of the May 21, 2012 issue declaring him America’s “First Gay President.”
Obama’s letter is owned by Emory University and is stored in the university’s archives here in Atlanta.
The paragraph was first mentioned in historian David Garrow’s 2017 book titled “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.”
Garrow discussed the paragraph at length in an interview with Tablet magazine last week.
The NY Post obtained the paragraph from Garrow’s friend, Emory University professor Harvey Klehr.
“So I emailed Harvey, said, ‘Go to the Emory archives.’ He’s spent his whole life at Emory, but they won’t let him take pictures. 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.
McNear redacted the paragraph in her copy of the letter, which she showed to Garrow.
But the original letter, now at Emory, is unredacted.
Obama, 62, went on to marry fellow attorney Michelle Robinson in 1992. They share two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Last year Michelle, 59, revealed that she “couldn’t stand” her husband for 10 years while the couple’s children were young.
Michelle also wrote that she “hates” how she looks, “all the time and no matter what” in her 2022 book, The Light We Carry.
She has been candid about her mental health struggles and her battle with depression.
In 2021 Michelle revealed she suffers from “low-grade depression” due to the pandemic, racial injustice, and Donald Trump.
Originally published on Aug. 14 at 10:25 AM.
