Pulitzer prize-winning biographer David J. Garrow reveals in his work Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, that the former President of the United States had considered a homosexual relationship with assistant professor Lawrence Goldyn during his college years.
According to Garrow’s writing, Goldyn was one of the first openly gay people Obama had ever met in the 1980s and was his favorite professor in college. Obama had stated that Goldyn was a terrific guy and that he had developed a strong friendship with him even outside of college.
Years later, Obama had admitted to his then girlfriend in a letter, that he had considered a homosexual relationship with his professor but ultimately decided that it would be “less challenging and demanding than developing one with the opposite sex.”
Obama has already publically mentioned Goldyn in an interview with The Advocate in 2009, when he had been asked about people that had influenced his thoughts about the homosexual community. In response to the question, Obama had mentioned his mother and then Lawrence Goldyn, stating: “He was a wonderful guy,” 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.”
Today, Goldyn is a doctor and HIV specialist in California.
